HER  BROTHER'S  LETTERS 


Kittens. 


HER  BROTHER'S 
LETTERS 


WHEREIN  MISS  CHRISTINE  CARSON.  OF 
CINCINNATI,  IS  SHOWN  HOW  THE  AFFAIRS 
OF  GIRLS  AND  WOMEN  ARE  REGARDED 
BY  MEN  IN  GENERAL  AND,  IN  PARTICU- 
LAR, BY  HER  BROTHER,  LENT  CARSON, 
LAWYER,  OF  NEW  YORK  CITY. 


ANONYMOUS 


DRAWINGS    BY 

F.   VAUX   WILSON 

AND 

C.    M.    RELYEA 


1906 

MOFFAT,  YARD  &  COMPANY 
NEW    YORK 


COPYRIGHT,  1908,  BY 

MOFFAT.  YARD  &  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 

Published  September.  loot) 


THE   LETTERS 


LETTER  NUMBER  ONE 3 

In  Which  the  Brother  Talks  to  His 
Sister,  Who  Wants  to  Wear  De- 
colletee. 

LETTER  NUMBER  TWO 19 

In  Which  the  Brother  Touches  on 
the  Hysterical  Adulation  of  Public 
Idols  by  Women. 

LETTER  NUMBER  THREE. . .     37 

In  Which  the  Brother  Talks  to  His 
Sister  about  Never  Marrying  a  Man 
until  She's  Got  Another  Man's  Hon- 
est Opinion  of  Him. 

LETTER  NUMBER  FOUR 55 

In  Which  the  Brother  Talks  to  His 
Sister  about  Her  Wish  to  Read  a  Pa- 
per before  a  Woman's  Club. 


2228392 


LETTER  NUMBER  FIVE 73 

In  Which  the  Brother  Has  a  Few 
Things  to  Say  about  Dancing. 

LETTER  NUMBER  SIX 89 

In  Which  the  Sister  is  told  the  Kind 
of  Girls  that  Men  Like  Best  in  the 
Long  Run. 

LETTER  NUMBER  SEVEN. . .    105 

In  Which  the  Brother  Tells  of  a 
Happening  that  Disturbed  a  Fash- 
ionable Dinner  Party. 

LETTER  NUMBER  EIGHT. ...    123 

In  Which  the  Brother  Replies  to 
Some  of  His  Sister's  Strictures  on 
Men. 

LETTER  NUMBER  NINE 145 

In  Which  the  Brother  Tells  of  the 
High  Opinion  He  Has  of  the  Man  His 
Sister  is  Engaged  to  Marry. 


THE  SISTER'S  ANSWERS  TO 
HER  BROTHER'S  LETTERS.  163 

In  Which  "Kittens,"  now  Mrs.  Ed- 
ward King,  tells  how  She  Liked  what 
Her  Brother  Wrote  Her. 

ONE  OF  KITTENS'S  LETTERS 
TO  HER  BROTHER 187 

In  Which  She  Tells  Her  Brother 
How  Ned  Proposed  to  Her. 

A    MAN'S    ANSWER    TO    A 
MAN 205 

By  the  Author  of  "Her  Brother's 
Letters." 


THE  DRAWINGS 


Kittens    Frontispiece 

"She  Had  More  Attention  Than  Any 
Other  Girl  in  That  Whole  Horseshoe".  10 

"Such  Pushing  and  Shoving  I  Have 
Never  Experienced.  Your  Idol,  Poor 
Chap,  Had  His  Hat  Smashed" 28 

"You've  Got  to  Be  Frank  with  Me,  Lent"     40 

"There  Wasn't  a  Woman  in  the  Bunch 
Who  Had  More  Than  a  Superficial 
Knowledge  of  the  Real  and  Vital  Order 
of  Things" 58 

"What  Possible  Grace  There  Is  in  That 
Rowdy  Shuffle  I  Fail  to  See" 74 

"The  Grip  Originated  at  Bowery  Dances"     82 

"She's  a  Great  Girl.  She  Knew  I  Couldn't 
Afford  a  Hack,  and  so  She  Tactfully 
Proposed  Walking  to  the  Play" 98 

"She  Dropped  the  Five  Dollar  Bill  on  My 
Sister's  Washboard". .  .116 


The  Drawings 

"Claire     Loved     Those     Children     for 
Gladys's  Sake" 128 

"You  Will  Have  the  Time  of  Your  Life 
in  Your  Little  Home" 152 

"I  Came  Upon  the  Packet  When  Sorting 
Over  an  Old  Catch-all  Trunk" 164 


LETTER  NUMBER  ONE 


Letter   Number    One 


LETTER   NUMBER   ONE, 

IN  WHICH   THE  BROTHER  TALKS  TO 

His  SISTER,  WHO  WANTS  TO 

WEAR    DECOLLETEE. 

My  Dear  Kittens: 

TRY  hard  to  forgive  me,  Sis,  when 
I  tell  you  that  of  late  your  let- 
ters remind  me  of  the  old  lady 
who  said  that  everything  she  liked  was 
either  indigestible  or  immoral. 

For  instance,  take  your  last  letter;  I 
thought  long  about  it,  for  you  wrote  the 
governor  had  said:  "Put  it  up  to  Len, 
and  as  he  says  so  shall  it  be,"  and  then 
you  urged,"Now,c?0,  you  dear,  good  fel- 
low, decide  for  me,  and  I  shall  love  you 
eternally."  And  all  this  "eternal"  love 
was  to  be  given  me  if  I  said,  "Why,  yes ; 
go  ahead,  Kittens,  tell  the  governor  he's 


Her   Brother's    Letters 


old-fashioned :  point  out  to  him  he's  be- 
hind the  times:  show  him  all  the  girls 
of  your  age  wear  low-necked  gowns  at 
swell  affairs  and  why  shouldn't  you?" 
But,  dear  girl,  I'm  not  going  to  do  any- 
thing of  the  sort,  and  I'll  tell  you  why. 

This  low-necked  dress  business  on  the 
part  of  women  is  getting  to  be  more  of 
a  horror  to  decent  men  all  the  time,  and 
I  am  not  going  to  say  any  word  that  will 
bring  my  young  sister  into  the  ranks  of 
the  "undressed."  You  will  say,  of 
course,  that  I,  too,  am  "old-fogyish," 
and  that  I  want  you  to  look  like  a 
"frump"  among  the  other  girls.  If  ex- 
posing your  body  (don't  gasp:  I'm 
"speakin'  out  in  meetin'  "  all  right  and 
calling  things  by  their  right  names,  and 
I  intend  to  do  so)  means  your  going  to 
be  "like  the  rest  of  the  girls,"  then  I'd 
rather  you'd  be  a  "frump." 


Letter   Number   One 


You  are  twenty-three  now,  Kittens — 
old  enough  to  have  some  very  plain 
words  said  to  you,  and  I  am  going  to 
take  a  brother's  privilege  and  say  them 
whether  you  like  them  or  not.  You  say, 
"All  the  nice  girls  I  know  wear  de- 
colletee,"  but  is  that  so?  Alice  Dunton 
doesn't;  neither  does  Ella  King,  nor  Fan- 
nie Scott.  "Yes,"  you  will  say,  "but  they 
are  the  exceptions.  Look  at  the  vast 
majority."  Not  "the  vast  majority," 
Sis;  what  you  mean  is  the  majority  in 
the  "smart  set."  But  even  in  the  "smart 
set"  there  are  exceptions  to  the  "un- 
dressed." I  was  at  the  opera  one  night, 
and  as  I  looked  around  the  "gold  horse- 
shoe" of  boxes,  as  it  is  called,  I  couldn't 
help  singling  out  one  girl.  Dick  was 
with  me,  and  he  said,  "Len,  who  is  that 
girl  in  white  in  the  third  box  from  the 
centre?  Isn't  it  Miss  Foote?"  And  it 


Her    Brother's    Letters 


was  Miss  Foote,  one  of  the  richest  girls 
in  New  York,  who  could  buy  and  sell  the 
women  in  the  boxes  on  either  side  of  her 
several  times  over  and  not  feel  it.  And 
there  she  was :  in  a  white  dress  ( I  can't, 
of  course,  describe  the  goods  or  the  cut) 
as  stunning  as  you  please.  But  her 
dress  from  her  bust  up  to  her  neck  had 
a  lacy  sort  of  stuff  that  was  as  modest 
and  sweet  as  could  be.  There  was  not 
a  suggestive  line  about  her. 

During  the  entr'actes  I  went  into  her 
box,  and  when  I  could  get  a  chance  I 
paid  my  respects  to  her  and  had  a  talk 
with  her.  I  say  when  I  could  get  a 
chance,  because  the  men  were  three 
deep  about  her  and  she  had  more  atten- 
tion in  a  minute  than  any  other  girl  in 
that  whole  horseshoe.  "For  her  money," 
you  say.  No,  Kittens,  because  every 
man  knows  she  has  given  her  heart  to  a 


Letter   Number   One 


certain  chap,  and  so,  matrimonially 
speaking,  she  is  out  of  the  market.  It 
was  simply  because,  as  a  man  about 
town  whom  I  wouldn't  exactly  care  to 
have  you  know,  and  yet  who,  blase  as  he 
is  and  almost  insensible  to  the  finer 
things  as  I  thought  him  to  be,  said  to  me 
in  the  foyer :  "By  Jove,  Len,  it  is  a  nice 
thing  to  see  a  girl  like  that,  dressed  as 
she  is  and  as  decent  as  she  is,  sitting  in 
that  sea  of  indecent  expose,  isn't  it?" 

There  you  have  it,  Kittens,  from  a 
thorough  man  of  the  world,  a  man  who 
isn't  particularly  careful  or  fine  in  his 
point  of  view  so  far  as  women  are  con- 
cerned: "indecent  expose!"  And  that 
is  what  it  is :  nothing  short  of  it.  There 
were  young  girls  there  in  those  boxes, 
Sis,  with  a  cut  to  their  bodices  that,  by 
thunder,  made  even  a  man's  eyes  turn 
away  from  what  he  could  see;  what 


8  Her   Brother's    Letters 

should  be  sacred  to  themselves  laid  ab- 
solutely bare  to  a  public! 

"Extreme,"  you  say.  Yes,  extreme, 
but  that  is  what  that  sort  of  thing 
leads  to  all  the  same.  It  is  not  a 
far  cry,  I  notice,  from  what  you  wom- 
en call  a  V-cut  gown,  I  think,  to 
shoulder-straps  that  make  decent  men 
wonder  if  they  will  hold  on,  and  other 
kinds  of  men  hope  they  won't.  "But 
those  men !"  you  say.  True,  but  a  wom- 
an in  a  public  place  cannot  always  con- 
trol the  kind  of  men  who  come  and 
speak  to  her,  or  are  brought  to  her. 
Here  is  a  picture  I  saw  in  a  paper  yes- 
terday. Of  course,  you  flare  up  and  say 
it  is  disgusting !  But,  frankly  now,  is  it 
so  much  more  disgusting  than  some  of 
the  displays  that  women  make  ?  Not  so 
much  worse  than  some  I  have  seen,  at 
any  rate.  We  are  in  a  very  fair  way  of 


Letter   Number    One  9 

coming  to  this  limit.  Only  last  week,  at 
the  theatre,  I  sat  behind  a  fat  woman — 
old  enough  to  know  better — who  had  on 
a  low-cut  dress,  and  the  view  from  be- 
hind was,  I  assure  you,  Sis,  such  as  no 
woman  of  even  the  faintest  decency 
would  be  guilty  of.  Nell  was  with  me, 
and  she  didn't  say  anything,  of  course, 
but  her  look  spoke  volumes ! 

And  do  you  for  a  moment  believe, 
Kittens,  that  this  low-necked  dressing 
arouses  the  highest  thoughts  in  even  the 
best  and  most  decent  men?  Not  for  a 
minute.  And  yet  these  thoughts,  the 
mere  mention  of  which  makes  a  self- 
respecting  girl  shrink,  thoughts  which 
are  full  of  danger  to  the  girl  and  not  less 
to  the  man — who,  pray,  arouses  such 
thoughts,  who  touches  the  match  to  the 
awakening  of  those  senses  in  a  man? 
And  who  does  it  deliberately,  too?  I 


io  Her    Brother's    Letters 

say  "deliberately,"  for  certainly  you 
women  do  not  dress  for  other  women — 
you  dress  for  men,  to  be  admired  by 
them,  to  be  courted  by  them,  to  have 
them  follow  in  your  train.  Deny  it  as 
you  may  and  do,  in  your  heart  you 
know  this  is  true.  Therefore,  if  you 
dress  for  men,  you  must  deliberately 
uncover  your  necks  and  shoulders  for 
them.  Frank  talk?  Yes:  and  I  mean 
to  be  franker  yet.  You  do  this,  and  then 
when  you  receive  a  vulgar  stare  from  a 
man:  when  a  man's  eyes  roam  below 
your  chin  you  shrink  from  him — he's 
"awful!"  you  say.  In  other  words, 
women  uncover  their  bodies  to  the  very 
verge  of  decency — and  beyond  it — they 
furnish  themselves  with  every  allure- 
ment to  the  senses  conceivable,  of 
fragrance,  of  texture,  of  everything; 
they  stand  revealed  before  men  in  this 


Letter   Number    One  n 

way,  nay,  they  go  further,  they  throw 
themselves  into  their  arms  this  way, 
dance  with  them — motion,  contact,  the 
surroundings  of  a  heated  room,  the  mu- 
sic— all  adding  to  only  one  effect  and 
result!  And  then — well,  then  what? 
When  the  sense  nature  is  aroused  in  a 
man,  and  by  some  action  or  look  he 
shows  it,  then  the  girl  retreats  shudder- 
ingly  with  disgust.  And  women  call  this 
virtue !  They  tamper  with  a  man :  play 
with  him,  and — turn  from  him.  Nice 
consistency  of  action,  forsooth! 

For  a  while  women  confined  these 
bodily  allurements  to  the  ballroom,  and 
to  affairs  after  lights  were  up.  But  ap- 
parently this  did  not  suffice,  and  latterly 
the  same  idea  has  been  introduced  into 
the  street  and  into  the  daylight  hours, 
so  far  as  it  can  be  with  that  nice  sense 
of  feminine  propriety  that  men  find  so 


12  Her    Brother's    Letters 

difficult  to  understand.  The  thinnest, 
flimsiest  textures  are  resorted  to  by 
young  girls  and  women  for  bodices  un- 
til the  texture  that  can  show  most  plain- 
ly the  billows  of  lace  and  of  pink  and 
blue  ribbons  underneath  seems  to  be  the 
most  sought  after.  But  even  that  did 
not  seem  to  suffice.  There  must  be  in- 
troduced the  "fishnet"  bodice,  showing 
"things  underneath"  even  more  plainly, 
more  strongly:  until  the  very  limit  of 
daring  openwork  design  for  a  waist 
seems  to  have  been  reached.  And  all 
for  what?  For  women?  I  would  like 
to  think  so.  And  when  a  man's  eyes 
wander  into  and  through  the  mazes  of 
these  openwork  bodices  you  girls  shrink 
again.  You  exclaim  with  beautiful 
modesty  about  the  immodesty  of  man! 
And  yet,  as  I  heard  an  actor  say  on  the 
vaudeville  stage  the  other  day,  "If 


Letter   Number    One  13 

women  don't  want  us  to  rubber  why  do 
they  wear  those  fishnets?"  Why,  in- 
deed? 

But  even  this  has  not  sufficed  for 
some  girls  and  women.  Apparently  it 
wasn't  enough  for  the  sex  to  wear  these 
"inflammatory  waists,"  as  a  chap  I 
know  calls  them,  and  suggest  the  upper 
portions  of  the  body  and  their  under- 
clothes. They  must  go  further  yet,  and 
in  comes  the  skirt  that  fits  so  tight 
around  the  hips  as  to  show  every  line 
and  curve  of  the  lower  anatomy — about 
as  indecently  suggestive  an  effect  as  a 
woman  can  reach.  With  this  generally 
goes  the  most  expensive  of  silk  openwork 
stockings,  with  the  sitting  posture  al- 
ways so  arranged  as  to  show  a  goodly 
part  of  the  expensive  things!  Every 
art  is  employed,  apparently,  to  go  just 
as  far  as  a  woman  can  go  in  the  direc- 


14  Her   Brother's    Letters 

tion  of  suggestive  dressing.  Where  is 
going  to  be  the  end  of  this  sort  of  thing, 
Sis?  Where  is  the  limit?  Are  men  all 
wrong  in  attributing  the  virtue  of  mod- 
esty to  women?  Hang  me  if  it  doesn't 
make  a  chap  sometimes  think  so! 

Keep  away  from  it  all,  Kittens. 
Dress  prettily,  yes,  as  a  girl  should.  But 
also  dress  modestly.  Don't  for  Heav- 
en's sake,  dress  either  before  or  after 
six  o'clock  in  a  way  that  will  set  men 
thinking  of  other  than  "charms  visibly 
seen."  Anything  beyond  that  is  bad — 
bad  for  the  girl  and  bad  for  the  man. 
Believe  me  when  I  say  that  the  decolle- 
tee,  and  what  goes  with  it  and  from  it, 
has  no  place  in  the  wardrobe  of  the  self- 
respecting,  modest  girl,  and  every  man 
that  is  a  man  will  agree  with  me.  There 
is  not  a  husband  who  is  a  husband  that 
wants  to  see  his  wife  or  his  daughter 


Letter    Number   One  15 

uncover  herself  for  the  gaze  and  vulgar 
comment  of  other  men.  You  may  hear 
it  excused:  you  may  hear  all  sorts  of 
reasons  given  by  girls,  but  in  the  final 
analysis  it  isn't  decent :  it  isn't  nice,  and 
every  man  respects  the  girl  who  shuns 
it,  who  keeps  everything  save  her  face 
and  hands  sacred. 

Henry  Ward  Beecher  summed  up 
the  whole  thing  in  a  nutshell  when  he 
said,  "A  proper  dress  for  any  girl  or 
woman  is  one  that  reveals  the  lady  but 
not  the  person." 

The  governor  is  right,  Sis,  and  he  is 
a  man  of  the  world:  big  and  broad- 
minded,  too.  He  has  seen  a  few  things, 
just  a  few  more  than  either  you  or  I, 
and  he's  a  pretty  good  sort  to  tie  to. 
Ask  him  if  the  mater  ever  showed  her 
neck  and  shoulders  to  a  collection  of 
motley  men,  and  I'll  wager  a  five-pound 


1 6  Her   Brother's   Letters 

box  of  the  best  that  Maillard  makes  that 
she  didn't;  and  you  and  I  know,  Kit- 
tens, that  the  mater  is  about  as  good 
and  fine  as  there  is  going.  Take  my 
word  for  it,  the  mater  is  pretty  good  for 
you  to  get  next,  and  so  is  the  governor : 
they're  pretty  well  matched,  those  two, 
in  good  old  common  sense,  and  you'll 
find  it  out  as  I  have.  Only  just  now: 
take  my  word  for  it.  Give  my  love  to 
both  of  them  and,  if  you  haven't  got  it 
in  for  me  too  hard  for  all  this,  kiss  your- 
self a  good  sound  whacking  kiss  on 
those  pretty  lips  of  yours  for 

YOUR  OLD  LENT, 

who  loves  you  too  hard  for  other  chaps 
to  see  what  they  have  no  business  to  see, 
and  what  in  after  years  you'll  be  deuced 
glad  they  didn't  see! 


LETTER  NUMBER  TWO. 


LETTER  NUMBER  TWO, 

IN  WHICH  THE  BROTHER  TOUCHES  ON 

THE  HYSTERICAL  ADULATION 

OF  PUBLIC  IDOLS  BY 

WOMEN. 

My  Dear  Kittens: 

YOU  will  be  interested,  I  think,  if 
not  altogether   pleased,   at  an 
experience  I   had,   apropos  of 
your  last  letter. 

You  told  me  in  that  letter  about  the 
"time  of  your  lives"  that  you  girls  had 
at  Music  Hall  the  other  afternoon  at  a 

recital  given  by :   how  his  playing 

simply  "carried  you  off  your  feet" :  how 
it  "enthralled"  you  and  made  you  all 
feel  that  this  pianist  was  "simply  di- 
vine." All  the  girls  had  "creeps  down 
their  spines" :  they  were  "hot  and  cold 

19 


2O  Her   Brother's    Letters 

all  over,"  etc.  In  short,  you  had  one  of 
those  hysterical  flings  that  seem  to  ap- 
peal to  girls  and  women  at  these  re- 
citals. 

"Well,  what  of  it,  if  we  did?"  you  ask. 
Nothing,  Kittens:  if  you  had  let  it  go 
at  all  that,  except  that  I  don't  think  this 
sort  of  thing  is  healthy  for  you,  since 
you  say  yourself  that  you  were  all  "as 
limp  as  wet  rags  after  it."  But  never 
mind  all  that.  That  sort  of  enjoyment 
(!)  is  feminine,  I  suppose,  and  cannot 
be  understood  by  a  man.  But  then  you 
say  that  you  girls,  at  the  close  of  the 
recital,  crowded  around  the  stage  and 
just  buried  this  artist  with  your  cor- 
sage bouquets,  waylaid  him  as  he  came 
out  of  the  stage  door,  threw  violets  at 
him,  and  "fairly  surrounded  him  until 
he  had  to  fight  his  way  through  us  to 
his  carriage."  And  you  say :  "He  was 


Letter   Number   Two  21 

tickled  to  pieces,  and  smiled  and  smiled 
and  waved  his  hand  and  took  off  his  hat 
again  and  again,"  etc.  That  is,  you 
thought  he  felt  "tickled."  You  retort, 
"I  know  he  did." 

But  I  am  going  to  give  you  a  side  of 
that  picture  that  you  don't  expect. 

Now  I  happen  to  know  this  idol  of 
yours.  I  met  him  two  years  ago,  got 
to  know  him  pretty  well,  and  day  before 
yesterday  I  spent  an  hour  with  him,  and 
yesterday  the  best  part  of  the  afternoon. 
Coincidence,  wasn't  it?  Well,  not  ex- 
actly, for  I  put  myself  into  the  way  of  it 
— for  a  purpose;  although,  I  confess,  I 
didn't  expect  to  hear  and  experience 
what  I  did. 

Except  for  a  recital  in  Philadelphia 
he  had  come  direct  from  the  one  at 
which  you  heard  him  in  Cincinnati  to 
New  York.  So,  during  our  chat,  I  turned 


22  Her   Brother's    Letters 

the  talk  to  his  work,  and  finally  led  the 
conversation  to  his  recital  at  Cincinnati. 

"The  women  there  gave  you  the  usual 
appreciative  reception  that  we  read 
about,  I  suppose?"  I  asked  him  with  a 
smile. 

But  he  didn't  smile,  Sis,  for  your  idol 
is  a  much  more  sensible,  manly  chap 
than  you  girls  think  he  is. 

"Well,  Mr.  Carson,"  he  replied,  "my 
experience  in  Cincinnati  was  unfortu- 
nately too  much  like  my  experience  in 
other  cities." 

"How  'unfortunate'?"  I  asked. 

"Well,  sir,"  replied  he,  looking  at  me 
in  a  serious  way,  "I  cannot  help  wishing 
that  your  American  girls — and  their 
mothers,  too,  I  may  say — had  a  little 
more — what  do  you  call  it ?" 

"Restraint?"  I  filled  in. 

"Yes,  decidedly,"  he  said ;  "restraint : 


Letter   Number   Two  23 

self-poise  I  should  call  it,  perhaps.  I 
can't  believe,"  continued  this  man  who, 
you  say,  was  so  "tickled"  with  you  girls, 
"that  this  hysteria  with  which  they  fa- 
vor" (here  there  was  a  sickly  smile) 
"me  and  other  performers  is  good  for 
these  girls  physically.  In  fact,  I  know 
it  is  not.  Not  only  that,  but,  if  you  will 
excuse  me  for  saying  so,  it  does  not 
seem  to  be  womanly.  It  is  certainly  not 
in  good  taste." 

Very  much  "tickled,"  wasn't  he  ?  But 
wait: 

"Of  course,"  he  said,  "I  must  appear 
pleased  and  appreciative:  it  is  part  of 
my  business :  my  bread  and  butter,  yes ! 
And  since  these  women  mean  well  I 
must  accept  their  tribute  in  spirit.  But 
I  do  not  like  it:  it  makes  me  sad  in  a 
way.  I  was  always  taught  to  believe  in 
a  woman  as  something  modest  and  hav- 


24  Her   Brother's   Letters 

ing  a  certain  dignity :  one  who  has  her- 
self well  in  hand — appreciative  of  an 
honest  effort,  yes,  but  not  foolish !  And 
it  is  foolish:  this  throwing  of  flowers 
and  such  things.  It  does  not  'go'  with  a 
man,  you  know.  It  makes  a  fool  of  him, 
too.  And  I  never  know  what  to  do  with 
these  flowers"  (there  came  that  sickly 
smile  again)  "that  they  tear  from  their 
dresses  and  throw  at  me.  Of  course,  I 
must  pick  them  up,  but  I  do  not  like  their 
odor  in  a  room." 

"What  do  you  do  with  them?" 
"Ah,"  he  said,  "I  tell  my  manager  to 
send  them  to  the  sick,  and  I  hope  he 
does  it.  But  I  must  say  that  I  have 
caught  him  more  than  once  throwing 
them  out  of  the  window  or  giving  them 
to  the  chambermaids." 

A    little    different    from    what    you 
thought,  Sis.    But  there  is  more. 


Letter   Number   Two  25 

"Mr.  Carson,"  he  exclaimed,  "tell  me: 
why  do  your  American  girls  do  these 
unheard-of  things  —  unheard  of,  be- 
cause the  girls  of  other  countries  do 
not  do  them?  They  come  to  my  con- 
certs: they  seem  to  enjoy  them:  they 
applaud  me  when  I  do  well,  and  then 
they  go  home  as  well-ordered  people 
should.  That  is  what  I  like :  that's  what 
makes  a  man's  opinion  of  women 
higher. 

"But  this  other  sort  of  thing,"  he 
went  on,  "it  is  not  gracious  in  a  girl :  it 
does  not  belong  to  her.  I  want  to  think 
well  of  American  girls  and  women,  for 
they  have  been  very  generous  to  me,  and 
made  many  things  possible  for  me  and 
mine  at  home.  But,  just  stop  and  think, 
Mr.  Carson,  what  I  see  as  I  go  from  city 
to  city  in  your  country :  think  how  hard  . 
it  is  for  me,  as  a  foreigner,  to  believe 


26  Her   Brother's    Letters 

that  your  American  girls  are  nice :  that 
they  are  all  they  should  be. 

"They  mean  well,  I  do  not  doubt,"  he 
added,  "but  is  that  the  most  I  should  be 
able  to  say  of  the  American  girl:  that 
she  means  well  ? 

"Mr.  Carson,"  he  said  suddenly  be- 
fore I  could  answer,  "I  should  like  very 
much  to  have  you  come  to  my  recital  to- 
morrow afternoon  and  see  for  your- 
self." 

I  hesitated  a  moment,  Sis,  for  you 
know  I'm  not  given  to  these  afternoon 
"hen  affairs."  Still,  it  was  Saturday, 
with  no  court,  and  I  agreed. 

So  yesterday  I  went  to  the  recital 
with  your  idol,  and  for  two  hours  I  sat 
there  and  nothing  happened.  When  he 
had  played  his  last  number,  however, 
there  was  a  movement  toward  the  stage, 
and  when  he  came  out  again  the  women 


Letter    Number   Two  27 

were  packed  around  that  stage  fifty 
deep.  I  never  saw  such  jostling  and 
pushing.  Twice,  thrice,  he  came  out 
and  bowed,  and  then  he  played  again. 
This  went  on  for  three  encores,  and  then 
began  the  throwing  of  corsage  bouquets 
the  like  of  which  I  never  saw  before. 
A  fourth  encore,  and  as  he  finished  he 
beckoned  to  me  in  the  box  and  I  went 
"behind." 

"I  am  going  home,"  he  said  briefly. 
"Will  you  come  with  me  and  walk  ahead 
to  the  carriage  ?" 

"Walk  ahead?"  I  asked.  But  just 
then  I  opened  the  stage  door  leading  to 
the  street  and  I  saw  what  he  meant. 
There  stood  a  surging  mass  of  at  least 
a  thousand  girls  and  women,  and  a 
crazier  and  more  tense  set  of  faces  I 
never  saw  before  and  hope  never  to  see 
again. 


28  Her    Brother's    Letters 

"Here  he  comes!"  came  from  a  hun- 
dred of  these  women  at  once,  and  in  a 
moment  I  found  myself  in  a  whirl  of 
women  actually  fighting  my  way  to  the 
curb,  with  your  idol  keeping  close  be- 
hind me. 

I  never  was  so  disgusted  with  woman- 
hood in  my  life.  They  closed  in  on  us: 
the  feminine  proximity  was  absolutely 
offensive:  women's  faces  were  thrust 
into  our  own,  hands  were  laid  on  us,  and 
such  pushing  and  shoving  I  never  ex- 
perienced. At  last  I  reached  the  car- 
riage, pulled  open  the  door  and  jumped 
in.  Your  poor  idol  was  still  some 
twenty-five  feet  from  me  in  the  midst  of 
a  frenzied  femininity  that  was  about  as 
disgusting  as  anything  I  had  ever  seen. 
Once  or  twice  I  saw  him  duck  his  head 
'way  down  into  the  front  of  his  coat  in 
a  way  I  couldn't  understand.  Finally 


Letter   Number   Two  29 

he  reached  the  carriage,  and  we  went  off 
pulling  ourselves  together.  Your  idol, 
poor  chap,  had  his  hat  smashed:  his 
necktie  was  askew:  his  coat-pockets 
were  torn,  and  when  he  reached  for  his 
handkerchief  he. found  it  gone!  Souve- 
nir, I  suppose!  Some  woman  had  de- 
liberately taken  that  handkerchief  out 
of  his  pocket ! 

I  was  mad  clean  through.  Your  idol 
looked  at  me,  smiled  and  said  nothing 
until  we  reached  his  hotel  and  had  light- 
ed our  cigars ;  then  he  turned  to  me  and 
said: 

"Well,  Mr.  Carson?" 

"There's  only  one  word  that  describes 
it,"  I  said,  "and  that  is,  'indecent.' " 

"It  strikes  you  that  way,  then?" 

"It  certainly  does,"  I  answered.  "Do 
you  mean  to  say  that  this  is  what  you  go 
through  all  the  time?"  I  asked. 


30  Her    Brother's    Letters 

"In  a  greater  or  less  degree,"  he  re- 
plied calmly,  and  then,  with  a  sickly 
smile,  he  added,  "At  least,  only  three 
women  this  afternoon  tried  to  kiss  me." 

"What?"  I  cried  in  astonishment,  al- 
most jumping  out  of  my  chair.  Then  a 
light  dawned  on  me,  and  I  asked:  "Is 
that  why  you  ducked  your  head  ?" 

"That's  why  I  ducked  my  head,  as 
you  call  it,"  he  said. 

"My  God!"  I  said.  It  was  the  only 
thing  I  could  think  of.  "Our  American 
women  carry  it  as  far  as  that !" 

"They  do,"  he  said,  and  then  he 
looked  at  me  seriously  and  said:  "Mr. 
Carson,  this  is  what  I  mean.  I  do  not 
mind  these  ravings  so  much  that  you 
saw  at  the  close  of  my  concert.  At  least, 
the  stage  separates  us.  But  it  is  this 
stage-door  frenzy :  when  these  girls  and 
women  come  so  close  to  me :  when  they 


Letter   Number   Two  31 

lay  hold  of  me;  when  they  try  to  put 
their  hands  on  my  shoulders  and  try  to 
kiss  me :  then — well,  then,  Mr.  Carson,  I 
will  not  say  more,  but  as  a  man  I  think 
you  will  understand  what  I  mean.  It  is 
to  me  disgusting:  it  goes  over  the  line 
of  woman's  modesty  and  passes  over  the 
line  of  a  man's  self-respect. 

"Forgive  me,"  he  added,  "if  I  am  too 
severe  on  your  women.  But  you  have 
seen  now  for  yourself,  and  then  that  is 
not  all.  Here,"  he  added,  "what  must  a 
man  think  when  he  receives  such  a  let- 
ter as  this?" 

He  picked  up  a  scented  note  from  the 
table  and  handed  it  to  me.  Eight  pages 
of  rhapsody  were  there — silly,  foolish 
rhapsody,  and  at  the  close  this  sentence : 

"Will  you  let  me  come  to  you,  see  you, 
and  try  and  tell  you  all  that  your  divine 
gift  has  done  for  me:  lifted  me  out  of 


32  Her   Brother's    Letters 

myself:  made  me  anew  as  it  were?  I 
owe  my  new  state  to  you :  to  your  divine 
art,  and  I  feel  as  if  I  could  lay  my  life, 
my  whole  being,  my  soul,  my  all  at  your 
feet!" 

"What  do  you  do  with  such  a  note?" 

"Do  with  it?"  he  repeated.  "What 
can  a  man  do  with  it  except  to  destroy 
it?" 

"Nothing,"  I  said,  "except  you  might 
do  as  William  Dean  Howells  did  once 
when  he  received  a  note  from  a  rhapsod- 
ical young  woman  telling  him  how 
poetry  seemed  to  be  surging  within  her 
and  yet  she  could  not  express  herself, 
and  asked  what  she  should  do.  And  he 
sat  down  and  wrote  her  this  answer : 
"  'My  Dear  Young  Lady: 

'  'I  would  strongly  urge  you  to  ask 
your  mother  to  give  you  a  good  dose  of 
sulphur  and  molasses/ 


Letter    Number   Two  33 

"But,  seriously,"  I  continued,  "this 
sort  of  a  note  is  exceptional,  is  it 
not?" 

"Exceptional!"  he  repeated.  "I  wish 
it  were." 

Surely,  Kittens,  you  girls  are  carry- 
ing this  hysteria  business  pretty  far.  It 
makes  a  man  ask  himself :  "Is  this  what 
music  is  doing  for  the  American  girl?" 
For,  as  this  artist  well  said  to  me  as  I 
left  him : 

"I  tell  you,  Mr.  Carson,  this  is  de- 
grading to  my  art.  It  is  not  a  tribute, 
but  an  offense,  for  whatever  we  may 
think  of  music  it  is  not  a  language  of 
hysterics." 

Nice  thing,  isn't  it,  Sis,  when  an  art- 
ist, such  as  this  man  unquestionably  is, 
can  only  say  of  the  American  girl's 
actions  that  they  are  degrading  to  his 
art! 


34  Her   Brother's    Letters 

I  leave  you  to  think  of  all  this  when 
next  you  go  to  a  recital. 

As  ever,  with  love  all  around. 

LENT. 


LETTER  NUMBER  THREE. 


LETTER  NUMBER  THREE, 

IN  WHICH  THE  BROTHER  TALKS  TO 
His  SISTER  ABOUT  NEVER  MARRY- 
ING A  MAN  UNTIL  SHE'S  GOT  AN- 
OTHER MAN'S  HONEST  OPINION  OF 
HIM. 

My  Dear  Vicious  Kittens: 

CHRISTMAS,  but  you  scratch 
hard,  Sis !  I  feel  as  if  I  haven't 
a  hair  left  on  my  head,  and  all 
because  I  didn't  tell  you  what  happened 
between  Nell  and  me  while  she  was  here 
in  New  York.  But  how  could  I?  A 
man  can't  very  well,  even  to  his  sister, 
say  anything  about  the  private  affairs 
of  a  girl,  unless  the  girl  lifts  the  bars 
herself,  can  he?  Now  that  Nell  says  I 
can  tell  you  all  about  it  I'm  willing,  al- 
though at  first  I  couldn't  for  the  life  of 

37 


38  Her    Brother's    Letters 

me  see  why  she  didn't  tell  you  herself. 
To-day  she  writes  me  that  she  feels  too 
badly  about  the  whole  thing  to  tell  even 
you,  her  closest  friend,  and  she  says  to 
me :  "You  tell  her,  Lent :  you're  a  man 
and  her  brother." 

After  all,  it  wasn't  so  tremendous,  al- 
though, of  course,  to  Nell  it  meant  a  lot. 
You  knew,  naturally,  that  Nell  was  en- 
gaged to  Bert  Cox,  and  came  on  here 
with  Aunt  Lena  to  buy  her  wedding 
things.  The  evening  she  arrived  T 
called  on  her,  as  she  wired  me,  to  give 
her  some  points  about  the  city  and  the 
shops.  The  next  day  she  started  out, 
and  it  was  agreed  that  I  was  to  dine 
with  them  that  evening. 

Well,  after  dinner  the  talk,  of  course, 
led  to  her  engagement  and  approaching 
marriage.  She  was  naturally  full  of  it 
and  Bert's  name  came  up  frequently. 


Letter    Number   Three  39 

At  one  point  she  said  something  about 
Bert — I  forget  now  exactly  what  it  was 
— and  I  must  have  been  fool  enough  to 
let  a  look  get  into  my  face  which  Nell 
saw.  Instantly  she  said  to  me : 

"Lent,  why  do  you  look  that  way?" 

"What  way?"  I  asked,  innocently 
enough. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  said,  "but  I've 
had  the  notion  two  or  three  times  that 
you  do  not  altogether  approve  of  Bert. 
Why  is  it?  Tell  me." 

Well,  Sis,  I  fenced  and  dodged  and 
ducked  until  all  of  a  sudden  Nell  got  up, 
picked  up  a  hassock,  threw  it  before  me, 
squatted  down  on  it,  and  putting  her 
two  elbows  on  my  knees  and  her  pretty 
face  between  her  hands,  said: 

"Look  here,  Lent.  You  know  me  bet- 
ter than  any  man  in  the  world  does,  bet- 
ter even  than  Bert.  Kittens  and  I  are 


4O  Her    Brother's    Letters 

like  sisters.  You  are  more  like  my 
brother  than  any  fellow  in  the  world. 
Now,  I'm  alone  in  the  world :  I  haven't 
a  father  or  a  mother  to  go  to,  and  you've 
got  to  be  frank  with  me,  Lent — real 
frank,  understand?" 

"What  about?"  I  asked  her,  although 
I  knew  mighty  well  what  was  coming, 
and  I  saw  that  Aunt  Lena  did,  too. 

"About  Bert,"  she  said,  and  I  saw  it 
cost  her  a  wrench  to  say  it.  "I  heard 
you  tell  Kittens  once  that  a  girl  should 
never  marry  a  man,  or  even  engage  her- 
self to  him,  until  she  got  another  man's 
opinion  of  him.  Now,"  taking  both  my 
hands,  "will  you  answer  me  one  ques- 
tion square  and  fair  ?" 

"Fire  away,"  I  replied. 

"All  right,"  she  said.  "Now,  talk  to 
me  as  if  I  were  Kittens  and  she  were 
going  to  marry  Bert  Cox.  Do  you 


'You've  Got  to  Be  Frank  With  Me,  Lent. 


Letter   Number   Three  41 

know,  as  a  man,  any  reason  why  I 
shouldn't  marry  him?" 

"I  do,  Nell,"  I  answered. 

It  was  tough,  Kittens,  and  I  knew  it 
would  be,  but  I  made  up  my  mind  I 
wouldn't  mince  matters.  I  never  heard 
a  girl  cry  so  in  my  life ;  she  threw  her- 
self on  her  arms  and  wept  and  wept 
until  I  thought  I'd  have  to  start  in  my- 
self. Aunt  Lena  threw  her  arms  around 
her  and  tried  her  best  to  comfort  her, 
but  it  was  no  use.  Nell  grew  positively 
hysterical.  I  lifted  her  on  the  couch, 
and  dear,  good  Aunt  Lena,  brick  that 
she  is,  worked  over  her  for  an  hour  or 
more.  I  wanted  to  send  for  a  doctor 
friend  of  mine,  but  Aunt  Lena  said  no ; 
she'd  be  all  right  soon.  It  was  nearly 
eleven  before  she  quieted  down,  and  then 
she  suddenly  pulled  herself  together,  got 
up,  threw  her  arms  around  my  neck 


42  Her    Brother's    Letters 

until  she  nearly  rammed  my  back  collar- 
button  into  my  flesh,  and  cried  some 
more.  I  guess  she  kept  it  up  for  another 
half  hour;  then  she  quieted  down, 
looked  into  my  eyes  and  said : 

"Forgive  me,  Lent.  I've  given  you  a 
miserable  evening  of  it,  but  I  couldn't 
help  it,"  and  off  she  went  again. 

I  left  her,  and  promised  I'd  run 
around  in  the  morning.  I  did,  and 
found  she'd  had  a  night  of  it,  and  looked 
it,  and  so  did  poor  Aunt  Lena.  But  Nell 
was  game,  and  asked  if  I  could  come  to 
her  the  next  day  for  a  good  long  talk. 
I  told  her  I  would,  but  I  felt  that  Bert 
should  be  there.  So  I  telegraphed  him 
to  come  on  at  once. 

The  next  afternoon  Bert  appeared, 
and  in  the  evening  Aunt  Lena,  Nell,  Bert 
and  I  had  a  pow-wow,  and  I  don't  want 
another  one  like  it  for  a  long  time. 


Letter    Number   Three  43 

I  started  off  by  asking  Nell  to  tell 
Bert  what  had  happened  two  evenings 
before,  how  the  question  had  come  up, 
and  where  we  had  left  it,  with  simply 
my  answer  to  the  question  and  no  de- 
tails given ;  that  I  had  preferred  to  have 
Bert  present  when  I  went  into  details. 

Then  my  turn  came,  and  I  started 
right  in  by  looking  Bert  square  in  the 
eye  and  saying  that  I  didn't  think  he  was 
a  decent  enough  fellow  to  marry  Nell. 
Of  course,  Bert  jumped,  in  fact  he 
jumped  several  times  during  the  even- 
ing, but  his  jumping  doesn't  go  for 
much. 

I  gave  my  reasons  for  saying  what 
I  did.  Nell  asked  me  to  be  frank,  and 
I  was  frank — brutally  frank,  perhaps. 
But  after  each  reason  I  "rested  my 
case,"  as  we  lawyers  say,  for  Bert  to 
get  in  his  defense.  He  made  a  show  of 


44  Her   Brother's    Letters 

it,  of  course,  but,  thunder,  he  knew 
mighty  well  he  couldn't  make  good,  and 
he  didn't.  There  was  a  lot  of  bluster 
and  all  that,  but  he  didn't  meet  the  facts, 
and  Nell  knew  it.  He  wasn't  even  as 
"sporty"  as  I  thought  he'd  be.  Kittens, 
for  when  a  man  is  up  against  a  thing  of 
that  sort  there's  only  one  thing  to  do,  to 
my  way  of  thinking:  to  acknowledge 
the  corn  and  be  open  about  it.  But  Bert 
didn't  do  that:  he  denied  this  and  de- 
nied that,  and  yet  he  couldn't  back  up  his 
denials. 

After  a  while,  seeing  that  merely  tell- 
ing me  I  was  a  liar,  and  letting  it  go  at 
that,  didn't  work  with  Nell,  he  took  the 
usual  tack  that  fellows  of  his  stripe  take : 
that  all  men  sow  their  wild  oats,  that  he 
had  sown  his  and  was  over  with  them: 
that  I  had  myself  ( I  made  him  take  that 
back,  all  right,  before  he  got  through), 


Letter    Number   Three  45 

and  that  he  didn't  know  a  young  fellow 
who  hadn't,  etc.  I  expected  this  argu- 
ment, and  I  saw  Nell  was  questioning 
in  her  mind  whether  this  wasn't  so,  for, 
I  suppose,  she,  like  all  girls,  had  heard 
that  this  wild-oats  business  is  common 
to  all  men;  that  a  girl  must  accept  a 
man  upon  that  condition,  and  all  that. 

I  told  Nell  that  this  was  all  tommy- 
rot,  and  Aunt  Lena  with  her  experience 
as  a  mother-confessor  with  men  and  her 
own  five  sons  came  in  here  like  a  load  of 
bricks,  and  Bert  soon  saw  that  this 
plausible  argument,  for  once,  wouldn't 
work  with  Nell,  although  it  does  so  often 
go  with  girls,  worse  luck! 

"However,  Bert,"  I  said,  "I'll  grant 
that  your  cowardly  arguments  are  all 
so :  I'll  grant  you  this  wild-oats  business 
is  common  to  you,  to  myself  even,  and 
to  every  man  before  he  meets  the  girl  he 


46  Her    Brother's    Letters 

wants  to  make  his  wife.  All  that  is 
granted.  But  how  about  your  wild  oats 
since  you  met  Nell,  courted  her,  and 
even  since  you've  been  engaged?" 

Of  course,  Sis,  I  had  purposely  kept 
this  back  as  my  last  shot,  and  it  hit  all 
right:  ye  gods,  how  it  hit!  Nell  fairly 
shot  out  of  her  chair,  and  I  never  saw 
a  girl's  eyes  blaze  as  did  hers  as  she 
fairly  flew  over  to  Bert. 

"Deny  that,  Bert ;  deny  it,  I  say !"  she 
fairly  screamed,  "and  prove  it,  prove  it 
on  your  word  as  a  man,  if  you  are  one, 
or  leave  this  room  instantly.  Which  is 
it?" 

Talk  about  a  melodrama !  There  was 
one,  and  not  in  a  theatre,  either.  I  never 
saw  a  girl  so  good  an  actress  without 
trying  to  be  one:  Mrs.  Leslie  Carter 
wasn't  in  it  with  Nell,  Sis. 

Bert  grew  as  white  as  his  shirt.    He 


Letter    Number   Three  47 

saw  that  he  was  dealing  with  a  woman 
full-grown  in  an  instant.  Nell  fairly 
towered  over  him  while  he  slunk  in  his 
chair.  For  the  first  time  I  felt  a  pity  for 
the  wretch.  But  that  feeling  was  all 
over  in  a  minute  when,  like  the  coward 
that  he  is,  he  got  up,  pulled  himself  to- 
gether, and  trying  his  best  to  be  manly, 
struck  a  most  ridiculous  attitude,  and 
revealed  himself  beautifully  in  his  own 
words : 

"Oh,  you're  a  lot  of  damned  idiots! 
I  don't  intend  to  be  insulted  any  longer. 
Go  to  the  devil,  all  of  you !" 

Well,  Sis,  it  was  lucky  I  didn't  get 
where  I  made  for,  and  I  shall  always 
thank  Aunt  Lena  for  it.  She  was  too 
quick  for  me,  yet  I  thought  I  was  a  bit 
quick.  But  it  was  better  so.  He's  too 
dirty  for  a  chap  to  lay  his  hands  on. 
He  got  out  all  right.  Couldn't  find  time 


48  Her   Brother's    Letters 

to  close  the  door  even  or  to  grab  his 
coat,  which  I  had  to  send  after  him.  But 
it  was  over:  that  was  the  main  point. 
I  saw  that  much,  thank  the  Lord,  and 
let  it  go  at  that.  Then  I  stayed  with 
Nell  and  Aunt  Lena  until  3  A.  M.,  took 
a  room  in  the  hotel,  slept  until  n  and 
missed  court.  Still,  I  don't  know  but 
I'd  miss  court  again  for  the  same  rea- 
son! 

There  you  have  it,  Kittens,  practically 
the  whole  thing  as  it  happened,  and 
what  isn't  written  is  between  the  lines, 
where  you  can  find  and  read  it,  I  guess. 

The  women  stayed  here  a  week  at  my 
earnest  request,  and  I  gave  them  a 
round  of  the  theatres  with  the  liveliest 
plays  that  the  town  held,  spent  Satur- 
day and  Sunday  with  them  all  day,  and 
Nell  was  a  little  more  like  her  own  self 
when  I  left  them  in  their  compartment 


Letter    Number    Three  49 

on  the  train.  She  took  me  a  bit  back, 
though,  that  last  minute  when  she  fairly 
grabbed  my  face  between  her  hands,  and 
I  don't  think  there  was  a  part  of  my 
handsome  (  !)  physiognomy  she  didn't 
fairly  rain  with  kisses,  dear  old  girl !  I 
only  wish  I  loved  her  and  she  loved  me, 
so  that  we  could  end  up  as  the  books 
would !  But  she'll  strike  the  right  chap 
yet.  She's  only  twenty-three,  isn't  she, 
and  with  that  face  and  those  eyes,  there 
is  many  a  good  chap  that  would  climb 
up  the  side  of  the  Flatiron  Building  for 
her — and  she'd  be  worth  it,  too.  Of 
course,  she  broke  down  when  she  got 
home,  and  the  mater  was,  as  usual,  all 
wool  and  a  yard  wide  for  taking  her  in. 
Tell  her  so  for  me,  and  tell  her  to  keep 
Nell  with  you  all  for  a  few  weeks  at 
least.  It  will  do  her  good  to  see  all  she 
can  of  the  mater  and  the  governor,  for 


50  Her    Brother's    Letters 

she  might  get  it  into  her  bully  little  head 
now  that  "all  men  are  gay  deceivers," 
and  that  would  be  as  great  a  pity  as  it 
is  a  wrong.  There  are  a  lot  of  chaps  in 
this  world  who  believe  with  Kipling 
when  he  says,  "There  are  some  things 
that  a  fellow  won't  do" — chaps  who  live 
by  the  rule  of  cleanliness  and  along  de- 
cent lines.  There's  the  other  kind,  of 
course,  and  there  may  be  many  of  them, 
but  they  don't  represent  the  whole  sex. 
,  This  whole  experience  simply  makes 
me  feel  the  more  strongly  what  you 
know  I  have  always  held  and  what  led 
to  all  this  about  Nell :  that  a  girl  should 
never  marry  a  fellow  until  she's  got  an- 
other man's  honest  opinion  of  him. 
She  can  always  get  such  an  opinion,  Kit- 
tens, even  where  she  has  no  father  or 
brother.  There's  always  a  straight 
chap  somewhere  around  whom  a  girl 


Letter    Number   Three  51 

can  go  to,  and  that  sort  of  man  will 
never  refuse  to  be  honest  with  such  a 
girl  if  she  will  be  honest  with  him — and 
if  she  will  heed  what  he  says  when  he 
puts  the  facts  before  her  and  not  go  off 
on  that  silly  tangent  of  reforming  a  man 
after  marriage!  If  a  girl  likes  to  play 
the  role  of  a  martyr — and  that  sort  of 
thing  seems  to  appeal  to  a  lot  of  girls — 
it's  about  the  surest  way  to  a  perfect  hell 
on  earth  ( forgive  me,  Sis,  but  that's  the 
only  word)  that  she  can  find! 

And  now  for  a  calm  pipeful  to  settle 
my  nerves.  It's  stirred  me  all  up  just  to 
write  about  it,  but  I  knew  you  wouldn't 
be  satisfied  with  anything  except  the 
whole  story.  And  here  it  is,  for  a  fact. 
A  whole  oceanful  of  love  for  the  folks 
and  you,  and  a  shake  for  Nell  from 
Your  old  meddler  of  a  brother, 

LENT. 


52  Her   Brother's    Letters 

Just  a  word  I  nearly  forgot:  Don't, 
for  a  minute,  believe  that  because  Ned 
has  come  to  the  house  several  times  since 
Nell  has  been  there  that  "it  looks  like 
something."  Like  nothing — in  that  di- 
rection, at  any  rate.  Now,  for  Heaven's 
sake,  don't  you  put  that  notion  into 
Nell's  head,  for  I  happen  to  know  better 
— there's  some  one  else  so  far  as  Ned  is 
concerned,  and  I'll  tell  you  about  it  when 
the  right  time  comes.  Meanwhile,  you 
keep  mum,  Kittens,  be  as  mum  as  a 
clam — but  don't  be  one ! 


LETTER  NUMBER  FOUR. 


LETTER  NUMBER  FOUR, 

IN  WHICH  THE  BROTHER  TALKS  TO 
His  SISTER  ABOUT  HER  WISH  TO 
READ  A  PAPER  BEFORE  A  WOMAN'S 
CLUB. 

Dear  Old  Kittens: 

IT  WAS  very  decent  of  you,  Sis,  to 
send   me   your   "paper"   on   "The 
Golden  Age  of  Woman"  which  you 
are  asked  to  read  before  the  Woman's 
Club  next  week.    I  took  it  right  up  last 
evening  when  it  came. 

You  say  you  were  provoked  at  the 
governor  because,  after  he  read  it,  he 
merely  said,  "Send  it  to  Len,"  and  that 
the  mater,  after  she  had  looked  it  over, 
remarked :  "I  think  your  father  is  right, 
dear.  Let  us  see  what  Len  has  to  say 
about  it.  He's  more  in  the  world  than 

55 


56  Her    Brother's    Letters 

your  father  and  I  are,  and  he  can  tell 
you  much  better."  Dear  old  sneaky 
souls !  They  knew,  all  right,  Sis.  They 
didn't  want  to  hurt  your  feelings,  old 
girl,  and  politely  left  it  for  me  to  do ! 

For,  Kittens,  dear,  take  my  advice 
and  don't  read  that  paper  to  the  Wom- 
an's Club  or  any  other  club — and  I'll  tell 
you  why. 

First  of  all,  you're  all  wrong,  Sis. 
You  couldn't  be  right  because  you're  too 
young  to  grapple  with  such  a  subject  as 
that.  You  can't  and  don't  know  a  thing 
about  it.  How  could  you,  Kittens — you 
who  have  been  sheltered  from  every 
breath  that  blows  from  the  very  outside 
world  which  you  think  you  are  portray- 
ing so  successfully?  It  takes  a  full  life, 
Sis,  a  life  filled  with  joy  and  sorrow, 
pleasure  and  pain,  birth  and  death,  sue-' 
cess  and  failure,  for  a  woman  to  write 


Letter   Number   Four  57 

about  a  subject  on  which  the  only  note 
that  can  ring  true  must  come  from  ex- 
perience. And  bless  your  dear  heart, 
what  experience  have  you  had  ?  I  know 
you  won't  like  it  when  I  say  that  the 
article  smacks  of  immaturity  and  inex- 
perience in  nearly  every  line.  But  that's 
a  fact  all  the  same,  and,  dear  girl,  before 
such  experienced  women  as  Mrs.  Cox, 
Mrs.  Noyes,  Mrs.  Farwell,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  Mrs.  Johnson  and  Mrs.  Dela- 
meter,  you  would  cut  a  sorry  figure,  for 
they  have  lived  through  and  found  to  be 
hollow  the  very  things  which  you  hold 
forth  about  as  the  ruling  elements  in  a 
woman's  life.  The  vital  trouble  with 
the  article  is  that  a  young  woman's  view 
of  the  future  should  be  toward  the  home 
and  the  things  worth  while,  while  your 
view  is  directly  away  from  it  and  toward 
a  world  where  women  chase  rainbows. 


58  Her   Brother's   Letters 

Then,  too,  Kittens,  you  don't  want  to 
stand  for  that  sort  of  thing:  I  mean 
both  this  talking  before  clubs  and  the 
views  you  have  expressed  in  your  paper. 
There  is  a  certain  type  of  the  idle  and 
restless  woman,  with  nothing  to  do  and 
nothing  in  her  arms,  who  considers  this 
talking  before  women's  clubs  business 
as  the  greatest  "stunt"  she  can  do.  I 
should  leave  that  sort  of  thing  to  that 
class.  They  are  not  pleasing  to  look  at 
in  their  roles,  and  all  retiring  and  mod- 
est women  regard  them  that  way. 

I  am  not  talking  "through  my  hat," 
as  Jack  says,  in  this  thing.  I  know  this 
type  of  woman  pretty  well.  A  year  ago 
our  firm  took  a  case  for  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal women's  organizations  of  this  sort 
here  in  New  York,  and  it  was  my  bad 
luck  to  have  the  case  handed  over  to  me. 
I  say  "bad  luck,"  because  in  preparing 


. 

s 
to 


1  *> 

- 


04 


Letter    Number    Four  59 

the  papers  and  evidence  in  the  case  I 
ran  up  quite  a  little  against  the  women 
who  are  the  leaders  in  this  club,  and 
what  I  saw  of  them  rubbed  off  a  bit  of 
the  bloom  from  the  peach.  They  were 
"peaches"  in  fact,  Sis. 

Of  all  unhealthy  views  about  woman 
and  her  part  in  running  of  things,  social 
and  domestic,  the  opinions  I  heard  from 
these  women  were  the  most  unsanitary. 
Not  only  were  the  ideas  unhealthy,  but 
they  were  undigested,  as  well.  There 
wasn't  a  woman  in  that  bunch — and  I 
met,  off  and  on,  a  dozen  or  fifteen  of 
them  at  close  range — who  had  more 
than  the  most  superficial  knowledge  of 
the  real  and  vital  order  of  things.  They 
simply  talked;  they  rarely  said  any- 
thing. Their  views  were  a  mass  of  the- 
ories, badly  twisted  and  fearfully  dis- 
torted. I  had  to  be  present  at  one  of 


6o  Her    Brother's    Letters 

their  meetings,  and  one  of  the  women — 
a  leader  in  this  whole  movement  of 
woman's  clubs  and  woman's  voting,  and 
all  that — let  out  the  statement,  ex- 
pressed with  a  tremendous  dramatic 
show,  that  "it  was  a  much  finer,  a  much 
bigger  thing  to  be  a  woman  than  to  be 
a  mother"!  There's  wholesome  philos- 
ophy for  you!  And  the  poor  epigram, 
for  that  was  all  it  was,  with  not  a  spark 
of  sincerity  behind  it,  was  met  with 
great  approval  by  the  hundred  or  more 
women  present.  Several  of  them  looked 
back  at  me,  poor  mere  man,  with  a  de- 
fiance that  plainly  said:  'There,  how 
do  you  like  that,  young  man?"  And, 
ye  gods  and  little  fishes!  I  would  have 
liked  to  tell  them,  only  I  wasn't  asked. 

For  weeks  I  had  run  up  against  these 
women  in  their  homes,  and  what  I  saw 
there  would  make  about  the  best  argu- 


Letter   Number    Four  61 

ments  I  can  imagine  against  this  whole 
women's  club  movement.  I  never  saw 
such  evidences  of  shirking  of  womanly, 
wifely  and  motherly  duties.  It  was 
enough  to  nauseate  a  man.  Such  neglect 
of  everything  that  makes  for  a  home  I 
never  want  to  see  again:  such  a  wild 
running  of  children,  such  table  manners, 
such  meals — badly  planned  and  "worse- 
ly"  served,  and  such  viewpoints  of  hus- 
bands as  I  got!  As  one  mighty  fine 
chap,  the  husband  of  one  of  these  club 
women,  whose  house  and  children  and 
servants  were  running  at  sixes  and 
sevens,  said  to  me  in  a  moment  of  con- 
fidence: "This  whole  club  business,  on 
the  part  of  women  who  are  wives  and 
mothers,  is  the  most  damnable  thing 
that  has  ever  happened,"  and  his  tone 
and  looks  spoke  volumes.  Poor  chap! 
He  looked  as  if  he  spoke  from  a  bitter 


62  Her    Brother's    Letters 

experience,  and  I  guess  he  did.  There 
wasn't  anything  even  approaching 
order  in  any  one  of  the  homes  of 
these  club  women.  How  could  there 
be?  These  women  were  forever  galli- 
vanting from  one  end  of  the  country  to 
another — gadding  here  and  there  or  at- 
tending this  or  that  convention,  and  if 
they  were  not  off  in  some  other  city  they 
were  at  meetings  of  their  own  home 
club.  They  were  hard,  Sis :  I  mean  hard 
of  views,  hard  of  heart  it  seemed  to  me. 
It  looked  as  if  they  had  ice-water  in 
their  veins  instead  of  good  red  blood. 
They  struck  me  as  a  lot  of  disappointed 
women  who  were  reaching  out  hither 
and  thither,  knowing  not  what  they 
wanted,  and  getting  it! 

Of  course  you  will  say,  "Yes,  but  I'm 
not  going  to  be  an  active  club  woman. 
I'm  going  only  to  my  own  club,"  etc. 


Letter    Number    Four  63 

I  know,  Kittens.  That's  the  way  the 
thing  begins.  One  step  leads  to  an- 
other, and  one  club  leads  to  a  second. 
I  know  you  will  argue  and  say  "not  for 
me,"  and  all  that;  but  that's  what  lots 
of  other  women  have  said,  and  the  first 
thing  they  knew  they  were  in  the  whirl. 
And  what  does  it  all  lead  to?  To  just 
such  neglect  as  I  saw,  not  in  one  home, 
but  in  all  those  homes,  with  not  a  single 
exception.  Besides  all  that,  you  want 
to  decide  whether  you  want  to  be  one  of 
these  women  who  talk  in  public — and 
forever  about  things  which  they  don't 
and  can't  understand.  You  know  very 
well  I'm  not  one  of  those  men  who  think 
all  a  woman  is  good  for  is  to  stay  at 
home,  cook  a  steak,  and  bear  and  rear 
children.  Not  by  a  jugful,  I'm  not,  and 
you  know  it,  for  we've  had  talks  enough 
about  that. 


64  Her    Brother's    Letters 

But  neither  am  I  one  of  those  chaps 
who  can  be  persuaded  to  see  good  where 
mightly  little  good  exists  or  can  exist, 
and  the  eight  or  nine  months'  active  ex- 
perience I  had  with  the  members  of  this 
New  York  woman's  club  convinced  me 
of  one  thing:  that  the  very  conditions 
which  surround  a  woman's  club  of  this 
sort — and  this  happens  to  be  one  of 
those  after  which  so  many  others 
throughout  the  country  are  patterned — 
are  against  a  healthy  influence,  either 
on  the  women  themselves  or  on  their 
domestic  interests.  I  grant  you  that  if 
a  woman  is  craving  for  publicity,  if  she 
wants  to  get  under  the  limelight,  get  her 
name  and  her  picture  in  the  newspapers 
— then  this  sort  of  thing  is  just  right 
for  her.  But  what  is  there  in  that  for 
a  woman  except  an  empty  life,  and  re- 
grets without  number  at  the  end  of  it  all  ? 


Letter   Number   Four  65 

I  am  thinking  now  of  three  of  these 
club  women  whose  names  every  club 
woman  in  the  country  knows.  Their 
names  are  constantly  in  the  papers: 
they  have  all  sorts  of  things  to  say  on 
all  sorts  of  questions  that  come  up  be- 
fore the  country — not  a  third  of  which 
they  intelligently  understand,  as  I  very 
soon  found  out  from  talking  with  them 
— and  what  are  their  real  lives?  One 
of  them  has  no  home  at  all :  she  told  me 
at  the  very  outset  that  she  had  yet  to 
meet  a  man,  in  her  forty-odd  years,  who 
was  true  of  heart  and  clean  of  mind. 
There's  a  healthy  mental  state  for  you ! 
The  second  is  married,  but  has  no  chil- 
dren, for, 'as  she  told  me,  they  were  a 
"hindrance  to  a  woman's  fullest  devel- 
opment." I'm  quoting  her  own  words. 
That's  womanly  for  you !  The  husband 
sat  by,  dropped  his  paper  at  this  remark, 


66  Her   Brother's    Letters 

and  looked  at  me  in  a  way  that  men 
understand  and  then  wish  they  didn't. 
I  felt  for  this  fellow!  The  third  wom- 
an has  a  home  and  three  children,  and 
such  a  home!  It  is  about  as  near — 
well,  you  can  supply  the  word — as  I 
can  very  well  imagine  a  place  to  be.  The 
children  were  unkempt,  unmannered, 
unruly,  and  about  as  motherless  a  lot 
of  poor  youngsters  as  a  man  wants  to 
see.  I  never  saw  this  woman's  husband, 
for  he  lived  in  another  part  of  the  house ! 
Fancy ! 

Now,  there  is  a  true  picture  of  the 
real  life  that  lies  behind  three  well- 
known  club  women  of  this  country,  each 
of  whom  you  doubtless  envy  for  her 
"gift"  to  get  up  and  talk  before  clubs, 
etc. 

Don't  you  let  that  sensible  little  head 
of  yours  go  too  far  in  the  notion  which 


Letter   Number   Four  67 

you  express  in  your  article  that  "this  is 
the  golden  age  of  women — for  women 
to  be  and  to  do."  For  women  to  be 
women  and  to  do  as  a  wise  God  intended 
women  to  do — yes !  But  not  what  your 
words  mean  without  your  knowing  it. 
You  have  said  a  trite  thing  that  has  been 
said  a  hundred  times  before,  but  it 
doesn't  mean  anything,  and  it  strikes  a 
very  undesirable  chord  in  the  hearts  of 
the  best  American  women  when  they 
hear  it.  This  isn't  any  more  of  a  golden 
age  for  women  than  any  other  age  in 
the  history  of  the  world — except  that  it 
seems  to  be  an  age  when  more  women 
are  quarreling  with  their  Creator  be- 
cause they  are  women.  And  that's  a 
pretty  unworthy  thing  for  any  woman 
to  do — especially  for  you,  Kittens,  when 
you  thing  of  what  the  mater  is  and  what 
she  has  done  for  us. 


68  Her    Brother's    Letters 

That's  why,  Kittens,  the  mater  made 
no  comment  when  she  read  your  article. 
If  you  want  to  have  comment  from  her, 
and  one  of  those  smiles  that  we  know 
so  well,  and  a  good  kiss  and  a  hug  in 
the  bargain,  just  tell  her  that  you've 
decided  not  to  read  the  paper ! 

And  watch  the  governor's  eye  kindle, 
too,  when  you  say  it !  After  you've  told 
them,  ask  them  what  they  think  of  this 
women's  club  fad,  and  there's  a  pair  of 
the  best  shell  sidecombs  to  a  scarfpin 
in  it  for  you  that  you'll  get  a  good, 
wholesome  point  of  view  against  the 
whole  business. 

Try  it,  Kittens,  and,  as  I  said  be- 
fore, you  can't  go  far  wrong  if  you 
get  and  stay  next  to  the  mater  and 
the  governor  in  such  things.  They 
won't  ask  you — that's  a  way  parents 
have — but  I'll  throw  in  a  tortoise-shell 


Letter   Number   Four  69 

backcomb,  the  best  I  can  find,  if  they're 
not  fairly  bubbling  over  with  curiosity 
as  to  what  I'll  write  you  about  this  club 
article  of  yours. 

There  are  plenty  of  things  worth 
while  for  a  girl  like  you  to  take  up — any 
one  of  them,  if  they  concern  the  home, 
calculated  to  do  you  more  good  in  a 
week,  mentally,  physically  and  morally, 
than  all  the  women's  clubs  in  the  coun- 
try can  do  for  you  in  a  year. 

Tell  you  what  you  do,  Kittens:  put 
your  paper  away  in  your  desk  and  take 
it  out  two  or  three  years  hence,  and 
you'll  thank  your  stars  you  never  read 
it  before  the  club,  and  you'll  wonder 
how  in  the  world  you  ever  thought  of 
such  views ! 

And  the  best  part  of  it  will  be,  then, 
you'll  have  no  after  regrets,  and  they're 
mighty  uncomfortable  things:  the  best 


7O  Her   Brother's   Letters 

things  in  the  world  to  avoid  if  you  can. 
Don't,  metaphorically,  pull  at  my  hair 
too  much  for  all  this.  It  is  getting  thin. 
Your  handsome  ( ! )  brother  isn't  as 
young  as  he  used  to  be,  you  know.  Still, 
he's  always 

Your  devoted 

LENT. 


LETTER  NUMBER  FIVE. 


LETTER  NUMBER  FIVE, 

IN  WHICH  THE  BROTHER  HAS  A  FEW 
THINGS  TO  SAY  ABOUT  DANCING. 

Dear  Kittens: 

THAT  is  very  decent  of  you  to 
want  to  give  "a  dance"  for  me 
when  I  come  home,  and  I'd  say 
"Yes"  in  a  minute  if  I  had  any  idea  it 
would  be  "a  dance."    But  two  or  three 
little  points  in  your  letter  have  com- 
pletely knocked  that  idea  out  of  mind. 

First:  the  dancing  card  you  send 
me  to  "fill  out"  with  the  names  of  the 
girls  I'd  like  to  dance  with.  It  says : 


1.  Walts  . . . 

2.  Two-step 

3.  Waltz  . . . 

4.  Two-step 
5-  Walts  . . . 
<5.  Two-step 


73 


74  Her    Brother's    Letters 

and  so  on  through  six  more  dances. 
But  the  same  monotony  all  down  the 
card;  not  a  change  from  the  two 
dances — and  one  of  them  not  a  dance  at 
all:  the  two-step.  I  say  not  a  dance 
because  it  isn't.  What  possible  grace 
there  is  in  this  hideous  and  rowdy 
shuffle  I  fail  to  see. 

The  next  time  you  go  to  a  dance  just 
sit  out  a  two-step  (if  the  chaps  will  let 
you)  and  watch  this  jerky  and  jumpy 
thing.  Why,  Sis,  it's  an  insult  to  call 
a  thing  like  that  a  dance.  There's  no 
dancing  in  it :  it  is  just  a  case  of  grab 
and  slide  and  shuffle:  not  a  spark  of 
poetic  feeling  about  it :  not  the  slightest 
talent  is  required  to  dance  it.  It  is  all 
right  for  "kids"  of  eighteen  and  young- 
er who  know  no  better.  But  for  young 
women  and  men  to  shuffle  through  such 
a  fool  thing  is  lowering  to  one  of  the 


ft. 


Letter   Number   Five  75 

most  graceful  of  the  social  arts,  to  say 
nothing  of  lowering  to  one's  self — espe- 
cially to  a  girl,  who  should  stand  for 
grace  if  for  anything. 

I  like  dancing,  as  you  know,  as  well 
as  the  next  man,  but  I  do  ask  that  my 
dancing  shall  be  reputable  and  graceful, 
and  the  two-step  is  neither  one  nor  the 
other.  I  don't  wonder  that  Allen  Dod- 
worth,  the  father  of  American  dancing, 
condemned  it,  and  that  at  the  last  annu- 
al convention  of  the  dancing-masters  it 
was  likewise  condemned,  and  that  teach- 
ers were  asked  not  to  give  instruction 
in  it  any  longer.  A  dance,  if  it  has  any- 
thing to  commend  it  in  the  wide  world 
— and  to  my  mind  it  has  much,  for  it 
can  teach  a  girl  or  a  chap  more  grace 
in  an  evening  than  all  the  Delsarte  les- 
sons she  or  he  can  get  in  a  month — a 
dance,  I  say,  should  be  the  poetry  of 


76  Her   Brother's   Letters 

motion,  and  what  poetry  or  anything 
else  except  vulgarity  is  there  in  the  two- 
step?  Men  won't  go  in  for  it,  and  I 
don't  blame  them.  I  won't,  I  know. 

Pray,  what  has  got  into  the  heads  of 
you  girls  that  the  lanciers,  the  quadrille, 
the  minuet,  and  all  the  dances  that  are 
really  dances  and  not  shuffles,  have  been 
dropped  off  the  cards  of  the  modern 
dance?  The  waltz  is,  of  course,  at  once 
the  most  beautiful,  the  most  graceful 
and  most  satisfactory  form  of  dancing 
there  is,  provided,  of  course,  that  it  is 
danced  well.  That  dance  you  girls  seem 
to  have  kept,  although  I  noticed  at 
dances  last  summer  that  ten  couples 
would  be  on  the  floor  while  a  waltz  was 
being  played,  while  twenty  couples 
would  be  up  and  dancing  the  two-step. 
The  only  consolation  to  me  in  the  sight 
was  that  the  two-steppers  were  mostly 


Letter   Number   Five  77 

"kids"  of  twenty  and  under.  But  where 
are  the  square  dances  ?  What  ails  them 
that  you  girls  have  relegated  them  to 
Art's  ash-heap  ?  Aren't  they  strenuous 
enough  ?  Are  they  too  graceful  ?  Must 
everything  we  have  in  our  American 
social  life  be  vulgarized,  even  dancing? 
I  use  the  word  "vulgarized,"  and  in  a 
rightful  sense,  too.  In  no  country  in  the 
world,  save  in  America,  is  there  a  feel- 
ing against  dancing.  Why  is  there 
here?  "Oh,"  you  exclaim,  and  then  you 
put  the  reason  on  "a  few  narrow  old 
people  who  never  had  any  fun  while 
they  were  young."  Well — perhaps. 
But  granting  such  premises,  are  these 
persons  the  only  ones  ?  I  think  not.  I 
hear  a  growing  objection  to  dancing 
among  intelligent  people.  "Why  ?"  you 
ask.  Simply  because  you  girls  are  al- 
lowing the  dance  to  be  vulgarized.  No, 


78  Her   Brother's    Letters 

perhaps  you  don't  know  it ;  I  don't  think 
you  do;  still  you  are  doing  it  all  the 
same. 

"How?"  Well,  in  the  first  place,  by 
allowing  the  silly  two-step  such  a  domi- 
nating place  in  your  dances — although 
that  will  probably  now  be  remedied  by 
the  dancing-masters  themselves,  as  it 
should  be. 

Then,  by  the  thoroughly  vulgar  meth- 
od, which  has  recently  come  in,  of  divid- 
ing one  dance  between  two  or  three 
partners.  You  say  in  your  own  letter: 
"If  there  are  not  dances  enough,  divide 
each  among  two  or  three  of  the  girls,  as 
you  like."  Not  for  me,  Kittens,  thank 
you !  If  a  girl  can't  give  me  one  dance 
to  myself  she  can  have  it,  and  that's 
what  other  men  are  saying  about  this 
silly  innovation.  There  is  no  possible 
excuse  for  this  fashion,  except  that  it 


Letter    Number    Five  79 

gives  certain  girls  a  chance  to  show  off 
and  pride  themselves  on  the  number  of 
men  they  have  danced  with  during  the 
evening.  But  I  don't  care  to  be  used 
by  a  girl  to  show  off  that  kind  of  popu- 
larity, and  if  she's  after  the  largest  num- 
ber of  men's  names  on  her  card  she  is 
welcome  to  all  she  can  get.  But  not 
mine.  I  have  a  little  too  much  self- 
respect  to  have  my  name  used  for  a  dis- 
play of  vanity. 

You  say  in  your  letter:  "We'll  not 
have  the  first  dance  until  ten."  That 
means  ten-thirty,  anyhow:  perhaps 
later.  There  are  twelve  dances  on  the 
card  you  sent  me:  which  also  means 
twelve  encores — twenty-four  dances  in 
all  and  a  Virginia  Reel!  All  this  to 
begin  at  ten-thirty.  And  wind  up, 
when?  One,  two  or  three  A.  M.?  No, 
thank  you,  Kittens:  I'm  not  going  to 


8o  Her    Brother's    Letters 

stand  for  that  sort  of  thing,  nor  am  I 
going  to  allow  you  to  stand  for  it,  either. 
And  I  don't  intend  to  get  a  lot  of  fellows 
out  that  evening  and  keep  them  up  until 
such  unhealthf  ul  hours !  They  don't  want 
to  do  it :  they  might  come  out  of  polite- 
ness to  you  or  to  me,  but  I  don't  intend 
to  put  them  in  any  such  position.  And 
let  me  say  right  here  that  is  why  you 
girls  can't  get  any  men — I  don't  mean 
sop-heads  now:  I  mean  real  men — to 
your  dances.  You  girls  can  sleep  the 
thing  off  the  next  morning.  But  the 
men  have  to  be  at  their  offices  at  eight- 
thirty  or  nine,  and  things  are  a  bit  too 
keen  and  on  the  jump  in  business  now- 
adays for  a  chap  to  get  himself  into  a 
boiled-owl  condition — just  for  a  dance. 
If  you  girls  would  start  your  dances  at 
eight  or  nine,  and  dance  until  eleven, 
and  gave  a  simple  supper — a  sensible 


Letter   Number   Five  81 

one,  I  mean,  not  your  usual  indigestible 
mass  of  rich  sweets  and  cold  sours — so 
as  to  let  a  fellow  get  home  by  eleven- 
thirty  or  twelve  at  the  latest,  you  might 
find  it  easier  to  get  a  few  men  at  your 
dances.  But  just  so  long  as  you  keep 
on  with  these  late  or  early  hours  they're 
going  to  keep  away,  and  what's  more, 
the  few  you  get  now  will  keep  away,  too. 
Men  in  business  can't  stand  that  sort  of 
thing,  Sis.  Take  my  word  for  it,  dear 
girl. 

It  is  for  you  girls,  too,  to  correct  an- 
other thing  at  your  dances,  and  that  is 
the  way  you  allow  men  to  hold  you 
while  dancing.  All  sorts  of  liberties 
have  been  taken  with  the  right  way  until 
now  it  is  one  of  the  most  ungraceful 
sights  imaginable  to  see  a  man's  hand 
pasted  on  the  middle  of  a  girl's  back. 
There  is  no  excuse  for  this  sort  of  a 


82  Her    Brother's    Letters 

"grip."  To  say  nothing  of  the  lack  of 
nicety  of  it,  or  the  possibilities  it  holds 
out  to  the  wrong  kind  of  a  fellow,  or 
the  perspiration  marks  from  the  hand, 
which  I  have  seen  again  and  again  left 
on  a  girl's  dress  when  a  man  doesn't 
wear  gloves  or  use  a  handkerchief  (and 
you  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  all  men 
do  not),  the  thing  is  wrong.  The  whole 
idea  of  the  hand  back  of  the  girl  is  to 
guide  her,  and  the  only  place,  when  such 
guiding  is  or  can  be  effective,  is  the 
proper  place:  at  the  waist-line.  That 
was  Dodworth's  idea,  and  he  was  right, 
and  if  you  will  look  at  any  of  the  old- 
time  dancers  you  will  see  that  the  man's 
hand  is  always  at  the  waist-line.  There 
is  where  it  belongs  from  the  point  of 
grace  or  effectiveness. 

The  "middle-of-the-back  grip"  orig- 
inated at  what  we  men  call  the  "spieler 


"The  Grip   Originated  at  Bowery  Dances. 


Letter    Number    Five  83 

dances"  in  the  Bowery,  and  how  in  the 
name  of  all  decency  the  habit  was  ever 
allowed  to  creep  into  other  circles  is 
more  than  the  average  human  mind  can 
tell.  A  man's  hand  is  anything  but  a 
graceful-looking  object  at  its  best,  and 
when  you  see  it  plastered  up  against  a 
girl's  back  it  is  about  as  far  from  a  de- 
sirable picture  as  you  would  want  it  to 
be.  Why  borrow  from  the  Bowery 
when  you  can  borrow  from  the  best 
seats  of  dancing  in  the  world:  the 
courts  of  Europe? 

The  next  time,  Kittens,  you  see  a 
photograph  of  a  foreign  court  ball,  just 
notice  where  the  hands  of  the  men  are, 
and  you  will  invariably  find  them  at  the 
waists  of  their  partners.  Foreigners 
have  repeatedly  commented  to  me  on  the 
vulgarity  of  our  American  "grip"  in 
dancing,  and  I  am  not  surprised  that 


84  Her   Brother's    Letters 

they  do.  Of  course,  it  is  all  well  enough 
to  say,  as  I  have  heard  American  girls 
say,  that  the  foreigners  are  atrocious 
dancers,  and  that  to  dance  with  an  Eng- 
lishman is  either  to  have  your  feet 
'  stepped  on  or  your  dress  torn.  But  that 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  proper  and 
only  way  for  a  man  to  hold  a  girl  in 
the  dance.  We  borrowed  the  dance 
from  abroad,  and  if  we  can  improve  it, 
all  well  and  good.  But  the  present  vul- 
gar method  of  holding  a  girl  is  not  an 
improvement ;  it  is  a  distinct  step  down, 
and  lowers  the  dance  of  the  drawing- 
room  to  the  dance  of  the  Bowery  hall. 

These  are  the  points  that  have  made 
the  dance  unpopular  with  the  right  sort 
of  men,  and  you  girls  will  never  get  the 
men  to  your  dances  until  you  get  your 
dances  back  to  where  they  should  be. 
We  had  pretty  good  times  at  our  dances 


Letter   Number    Five  85 

fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago,  and  we 
didn't  stand  for  those  things.  We  had 
one  partner  for  the  whole  dance;  we 
had  the  square  dances — and  there's 
nothing  more  graceful  or  enjoyable  than 
a  double  quadrille,  for  instance.  We 
stopped  our  dances  at  a  decent  hour, 
and  we  held  a  woman  in  the  dance  as 
she  should  be  held.  And  what  have  you 
girls  gained  by  departing  from  these 
standards?  Nothing  that  I  can  see  ex- 
cept the  growing  disapprobation  of  in- 
telligent parents — and  you  have  lost  the 
men! 

Regular  preachment  this,  isn't  it? 
But  your  letter  gave  me  the  chance,  and 
I've  wanted  to  air  my  views  on  dancing 
for  some  time.  Think  about  them,  Sis : 
you'll  find,  if  you  take  the  trouble  to  ask, 
that  most  men  think  as  I  do  about  this 
subject. 


86  Her   Brother's   Letters 

I'm  mighty  glad  to  hear  that  Nell  is 
getting  to  be  her  old  bright  self.  My 
"best"  to  her,  and  tell  Ned  he's  a  trump 
to  be  so  good  to  her  and  try  to  make  her 
forget.  Haven't  found  out  yet,  have 
you,  which  way  the  wind  is  blowing  with 
Ned? 

My  love  to  the  governor  and  the 
mater  and  kiss  yourself  heartily,  and 
long  for 

Your  "preachy"  brother, 

LENT. 


LETTER  NUMBER  SIX. 


LETTER  NUMBER  SIX, 

IN  WHICH  THE  SISTER  Is  TOLD  THE 

KIND  OF  GIRLS  THAT  MEN  LIKE 

BEST  IN  THE  LONG  RUN. 

My  Dear  Kittens: 

CLEAR  mad,  aren't  you :  "simply 
boiling,"  as  you  say!     Well, 
you  let  off  steam  all  right !  And 
all  because  I  hadn't  answered  your  last 
two  letters  on  the  day  I  received  them. 
And  why  didn't  I  ?  you  demand.    Simply 
because,  Sis,  a  chap  just  getting  into 
practice  in  a  town  like  this,  where  there 
are  sixty  lawyers  for  every  case,  has 
something  else  to  do  than  to  write  pri- 
vate  letters — yes,    even   home   letters. 
And  he  hasn't  to  be  forgetful  of  the 
home  folks,  either,  to  be  too  tired  to 
write  letters  after  a  day  at  the  office  and 
89 


90  Her    Brother's    Letters 

in  court,  with  a  stack  of  papers  that 
have  to  be  read  in  the  evening  before 
court  opens  the  next  morning. 

But,  thunder,  I  don't  suppose  you 
girls  can  understand  that  sort  of  thing. 
In  fact,  that  is,  to  my  mind,  where  a 
good  many  of  you  fail  so  utterly 
with  men:  you  don't  understand  men's 
lives,  and  a  lot  of  you  don't  seem  to  make 
the  slightest  effort  to  do  so,  either — and 
my  sister  among  them,  too ! 

For  instance,  in  one  of  your  letters 
you  tell  me  with  great  glee  how  Ned 
Cooper  took  you  to  the  theatre ;  that  it 
was  past  midnight  when  you  got  home ; 
that  you  had  a  little  supper  at  the  house ; 
that  the  last  trolley  had  gone  long  before 
Ned  started  home,  and  that  he  had  to 
wait  at  the  station  for  nearly  an  hour 
before  he  could  get  a  train  back  to  the 
city.  You  say  Ned  told  a  friend  he 


Letter    Number    Six  91 

didn't  reach  his  rooms  until  nearly  three 
A.  M.,  and  you  ask  me:  "Wasn't  it  a 
lark?"  For  you  and  Jess,  yes.  You 
two  girls  could  sleep  it  off  that  day,  and 
did,  as  you  say,  "straight  through  until 
past  eleven."  But  how  about  Ned?  It 
wasn't  much  of  a  "lark"  for  him.  He 
had  to  be  at  the  office  the  next  morning 
before  nine.  That  meant  getting  up  for 
him  by  seven  or  a  bit  after.  About  four 
hours'  sleep!  How  do  you  suppose  he 
felt  ?  That's  the  part  of  a  lark  you  girls 
don't  think  much  about.  You'll  say, 
"Oh,  well ;  what  of  it?  A  man  is  strong. 
Besides,  he  doesn't  care."  But  he  does 
care — more  than  you  girls  think.  Take 
a  fellow  like  Ned :  he  is  making  his  way, 
and  Fate  seems  always  against  a  man 
when  he  has  been  up  late  the  night  be- 
fore and  feels  like  a  "boiled  owl"  the 
next  morning,  for  as  sure  as  luck  that  is 


92  Her    Brother's    Letters 

the  very  day  that  something  important 
will  come  up  and  a  chap  can't  get  his 
mind  in  shape  to  meet  it. 

That  is  the  real  reason,  only  you  don't 
know  it,  back  of  your  scolding  when  you 
wrote  that  you  girls  don't  see  the  men 
at  dances  whom  you  would  like  to  meet. 
I  know  you  don't,  and  what's  more,  you 
won't.  The  young  fellows  who  are  try- 
ing to  make  something  of  themselves 
in  the  world  know  mighty  well  that  they 
can't  go  to  these  dancing  affairs  and  be 
fresh  the  next  morning  for  their  work. 
They  can't  stand  the  late  hours.  A 
man's  life,  whether  you  girls  know  it  or 
not,  is  his  business.  If  it  were  not  girls 
would  have  a  sorry  time  getting  their 
dressmaking,  music  and  what-not  bills 
paid. 

You  say,  "The  men  go  in  New  York : 
why  is  it  that  they  don't  out  here?" 


Letter    Number    Six  93 

There's  where  you're  wrong,  Sis.  You 
think,  as  I  did  when  I  came  here,  that 
the  men  go  to  these  affairs  here  in  New 
York  because  you  see  their  names  in  the 
newspapers.  Under  that  delusion  I 
went  to  several  of  these  affairs.  But  at 
not  one  of  them  did  I  meet  men  who 
amounted  to  shucks.  I  met  chaps  like 
Harry  Leer  and  Jimmie  Van  Alden. 
But  that  type  of  fellow  does  not  stand 
for  anything  in  New  York,  except  to 
lead  a  cotillion  and  that  sort  of  thing. 
They  are  fellows  either  of  easy  means 
(inherited:  because  they  couldn't  earn 
a  penny  themselves),  or  who  have  a  cer- 
tain cleverness,  although  they  generally 
shine  only  at  one  end,  and  with  that  end 
they  dance.  But  the  young  fellows  who 
have  any  backbone — not  one  of  them  did 
I  see.  In  fact,  there  wasn't  a  man  with 
whom  you  could  talk  on  any  topic  worth 


94  Her    Brother's    Letters 

talking  about.  They  could  talk  clothes, 
they  could  tell  you  the  latest  kink  in 
"autos,"  they  were  up  in  polo  and  cross- 
country riding,  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing.  But  that  doesn't  go  very  far 
here.  That's  all  right  at  Tuxedo  and 
Newport,  but  not  in  Nassau  Street. 
Those  fellows  are  what  we  men  call 
"non-producers":  some  men  call  them 
"sissies." 

They  are  like  that  young  chap,  Carl- 
ton,  of  whom  you  write  so  ecstatically. 
He  dances  well,  and  dresses  well,  and 
bowls  up  to  the  house  at  four  in  the 
afternoon  with  his  "auto"  and  takes  you 
and  Jess  for  a  spin  to  the  Zoo.  But  that 
isn't  the  sort  of  fellow  who  amounts  to 
a  hill  of  beans  in  the  long  run.  If  he 
did  he  wouldn't  be  able  to  come  to  the 
house  at  four:  he'd  be  at  his  office. 
Take  my  word  for  it,  Kittens,  that  kind 


Letter    Number    Six  95 

of  man  doesn't  wear.  I  know  Carlton 
better  than  you  do.  We  were  at  St. 
Paul's  and  at  Yale  together.  He  didn't 
study  then,  and  he  isn't  working  now, 
and  when  a  fellow  gets  to  be  thirty  and 
isn't  at  work  there's  something  wrong 
with  him.  He's  not  the  sort  of  chap 
that  a  girl  can  afford  to  be  seen  with 
often. 

Of  course  you'll  say  I'm  "poky." 
That's  a  mighty  convenient  word  you 
girls  have  in  calling  a  thing  by  its  wrong 
name  when  you  don't  like  the  right 
name.  But  you  watch  Carlton  and  com- 
pare him  with  Ned,  and  I'll  buy  you  the 
best  bonnet  at  Le  Reux's  when  I  come 
home  for  Easter  if  Ned  doesn't  size  up 
to  ten  of  Carlton's  kind. 

That  reminds  me.  You  remember 
Charlie  Wilson,  who  lived  next  to  Bert 
Cox  ?  He's  in  New  York  now,  and  he 


96  Her   Brother's    Letters 

dropped  in  at  my  rooms  last  night,  and 
as  he  sat  "filling  the  pipe"  he  raved 
about  Carrie  Poole.  You  know  what  a 
stunning  girl  she  is !  Well,  Charlie  was 
telling  me  that  he  took  her  to  see  Maude 
Adams  the  other  evening,  and  when  he 
got  to  her  home  in  Brooklyn  she  asked 
him  to  come  in.  After  a  while  she 
said  that  while  she  would  love  to  have 
him  stay  longer — they  were  having  a  bit 
of  supper  with  her  mother  and  her  two 
cousins  from  Alabama — she  knew  he 
was  a  business  man  and  had  to  keep 
hours.  He  had  to  come  'way  up  town 
here  nearly  to  Harlem.  She  knew  that 
and  appreciated  that  it  would  take  him 
a  full  hour,  if  not  more,  to  get  home. 
That  struck  Charlie  more  than  anything 
Carrie  ever  said  to  him.  It  won  him 
"hands  down,"  as  we  say.  "That's  the 
sort  of  girl,  Lent,  to  tie  up  to,"  he  said. 


Letter    Number   Six  97 

"She  thinks  a  bit  beyond  the  present 
hour  and  the  fun  she  is  having.  She's 
got  a  fellow's  interest  at  heart."  And 
she  has!  And  I'll  bet  a  cooky  Charlie 
will  propose  to  her  within  a  month. 

Charlie,  by-the-way,  was  telling  me 
that  Jennie  Boyd  threw  herself  into  a 
huff  the  other  evening  and  broke  her 
engagement  with  Jack  Otis,  and  the 
cause  of  it  is,  in  a  way,  apropos  of  what 
I  have  been  just  writing.  It  seems  that 
Jennie  wanted  to  make  up  a  "set"  for  a 
little  impromptu  affair  she  was  going 
to  have,  and  thoughtlessly  tried  at  once 
to  reach  Jack  at  his  office  by  tele- 
phone. It  so  happened  that  Jack  was 
busy  talking  over  a  big  "deal"  which  he 
had  engineered  with  the  head  of  his 
house  and  two  or  three  other  principals 
when  the  boy  came  in  and  told  him  that 
"Miss  Boyd  wanted  to  speak  with  him 


98  Her    Brother's    Letters 

at  the  telephone."  Of  course,  he  had  to 
excuse  himself  to  his  employers  and  go 
to  the  'phone.  But  it  was  awkward,  for 
the  message  caught  Jack  just  as  he  was 
in  the  middle  of  explaining  the  details 
of  his  "deal"  to  the  firm,  and  that  con- 
ference had  to  wait  for  ten  minutes 
while  Jack  went  downstairs  and  talked 
with  Jennie  about  her  "set."  It  didn't 
do  him  any  good  with  his  firm,  he  knew, 
to  be  called  out  of  an  important  business 
conference  to  answer  a  private  'phone 
message. 

That  evening  he  told  Jennie  about 
how  her  message  caught  him,  as  a  de- 
cently frank  chap  would,  anxious  for 
his  business  welfare.  But  she  took  it  as 
an  affront,  and,  like  a  spoiled  child,  mut- 
tered something  that  she  should  mean 
more  to  him  than  his  "old  business," 
and,  bless  me!  if  one  word  didn't  lead 


Letter    Number    Six  99 

to  another  until  she  up  and  broke  their 
engagement.  Of  course,  Jack  is  upset, 
and  I'm  going  to  see  him  to-morrow 
evening.  But  if  he  gives  me  half  a 
chance  I'll  tell  him  that  I  think  he  is  well 
rid  of  a  girl  who  doesn't  seem  to  realize 
that  a  man's  office  is  no  place  for  the 
making  of  social  engagements,  and  who 
cannot  see  that  she  has  no  right  to 
break  into  his  business  hours  by  calling 
him  up  on  the  'phone.  If  you  write  her 
don't  say  too  much  in  the  direction  of 
encouraging  her  to  get  Jack  back.  A 
girl  of  that  sort  is  best  left  to  her  own 
petulant  spirits  and  has  no  place  in  the 
life  of  a  fellow  who  wants  to  make  his 
way  in  the  world. 

I'd  rather  see  Jack  tie  up  to  Ruth  El- 
liott: she's  more  his  style  and  the  kind 
that  men  like.  I  know  you  girls  wonder 
why  we  men  think  of  Ruth  as  we  do. 


ioo  Her    Brother's    Letters 

I  heard  you  say  to  Jess  and  Nell  last 
winter  that  you  couldn't  make  out 
Ruth's  success  with  men,  because  she 
isn't  pretty  and  hasn't  those  little  ways 
that  most  of  you  girls  have.  All  the 
same,  men  think  she's  all  right,  Sis. 
Girls  as  pretty  and  light-headed  as  Jess 
may  go  well  for  an  evening's  fun,  but 
Ruth  is  the  kind  of  girl  that  men  pick 
out  for  something  more  lasting.  You'd 
never  catch  her  allowing  Archie  to 
spend  something  like  his  weekly  salary 
on  an  evening's  fun  with  her  as  Jess  did 
last  winter.  Not  on  your  life!  She's 
what  Charlie  called  her,  "a  great  girl," 
and  when  I  asked  him  why,  he  said: 
"Why,  hang  me,  if  she  didn't  tactfully 
arrange  it  the  other  evening  when  I  pro- 
posed the  play  to  her  that  she'd  prefer 
to  walk  rather  than  to  take  a  carriage, 
since  she  wanted  the  exercise  and  the 


Letter    Number    Six  101 

fresh  night  air.  She  knew  mighty  well 
I  couldn't  really  afford  a  hack,  but  that 
I  wanted  to  do  the  right  thing  with  her. 
She  simply  wouldn't  have  it,  and  got 
around  it  that  way.  I  didn't  let  on,  of 
course,  that  I  saw  through  her  game, 
but  I  could  have  hugged  her,  old  man, 
right  there  and  then,  for  her  thought." 

Well,  here's  your  letter,  and  I'll  try 
my  prettiest,  Sis,  to  write  you  oftener — 
if  I  can !  My  love  to  you  and  the  gov- 
ernor and  the  mater!  Tell  her  that  the 
"unmentionables"  she  sent  me  were  all 
right,  and  that  I  felt  her  love  woven 
into  each  stitch.  We  have  a  great 
mater,  one  in  a  hundred  thousand,  Kit- 
tens. 

As  you  say,  "she's  a  darling."  The 
governor  had  good  taste,  hadn't  he? 

My  regards  to  Ned,  and  tell  him  I've 
found  a  new  "mixture"  that  doesn't 


IO2  Her    Brother's    Letters 

burn  the  tongue,  and  that  I'll  send  him 
a  quarter-pound  can  of  it. 

Yours,  in  a  bath  of  repentance, 

LENT. 


LETTER  NUMBER  SEVEN. 


LETTER  NUMBER  SEVEN, 

IN  WHICH  THE  BROTHER  TELLS  OF  A 

HAPPENING  THAT  DISTURBED  A 

FASHIONABLE  DINNER  PARTY. 

My  Dear  Kittens: 

OF  COURSE  I  shall  be  adjudged 
"disagreeable"  again,  or,  to 
vary  it,  "disobliging."  But  all 
the  same,  good  sister  of  mine,  I  cannot 
fall  into  your  hysterical  (yes,  hysteri- 
cal) plan  that  you,  Jess  and  Lucy  shall 
come  here  to  New  York  for  a  week, 
with  your  pockets  full  of  money,  and 
try  "to  help  those  dear  unfortunate 
people  on  the  East  Side."  That  is,  to 
put  it  plainly,  you  girls  want  to  go 
"slumming."  Well,  you  can't,  Kittens, 

105 


io6  Her   Brother's   Letters 

not  with  me.  In  the  first  place,  I  have 
not  the  time  to  go  with  you:  I  don't 
know  any  one  who  has,  and  even  if  I 
did  I  wouldn't  stand  for  my  sister's 
doing  that  sort  of  thing.  I  notice,  by- 
the-way,  that  Nell  said  she  didn't  care 
to  come,  and  that  Ned  hadn't  the  time — 
no,  nor  the  inclination,  he  might  have 
added.  Two  sensible  folks,  those. 

For  conscience'  sake,  don't  fly  off  and 
get  mad  when  I  ask :  What  do  you  three 
girls  know  about  the  poor?  Nothing. 
How  could  you  ?  You  say,  for  instance, 
you  would  like  to  see  how  working-girls 
live,  and  find  out  how  you  could  help 
them.  Now,  what  arrant  nonsense !  In 
the  first  place,  what  do  you  suppose 
working-girls  are  like,  and  where  do 
you  think  they  live?  In  one  house,  I 
suppose,  where  you  could  go  and  look 
them  over,  as  you  would  go  to  the  Zoo 


Letter    Number    Seven  107 

to  see  the  animals.  Has  it  ever  oc- 
curred to  you  girls  that  it  is  yourselves; 
and  not  the  working-girls,  who  need 
help?  Your  very  attitude  to  help  the 
working-girl  is  one  of  condescension. 
Has  it  ever  occurred  that  the  thoughts, 
the  feelings,  the  aspirations,  the  ambi- 
tions— all  that  make  up  the  world  of  the 
working-girl — may  be,  and  are,  as  fine 
as  your  own  or  those  of  any  girl  you 
know  ?  The  fact  that  we  were  born  in  a 
certain  social  sphere,  or  that  the  gov- 
ernor has  been  fortunate  enough  to  ac- 
cumulate some  means,  does  not  entitle 
us,  my  dear  Kittens,  to  go  and  seek  out 
those  who  are  just  as  sensitive  in  their 
feelings,  and  who  value  their  home  pri- 
vacy just  as  much  as  we  do. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  you  dear  little 
goose  of  a  sister,  this  "slumming"  busi- 
ness is  pure  nonsense.  It  is  a  profana- 


io8  Her   Brother's    Letters 

tion  of  the  word  charity,  and  is  followed 
only  by  women  of  over-weening  vanity, 
a  prurient  curiosity,  or  of  an  over- 
wrought and  hysterical  sentimentality. 
And  do  you  fancy  for  a  minute  that  this 
"submerged  tenth,"  as  you  choose  to  call 
it  (which,  by-the-way,  you  should  use 
with  quotation  marks,  for  it  is  a  bor- 
rowed phrase),  relish  this  invasion  upon 
their  privacy  by  these  foolish  society 
girls  and  idle  women  ?  Let  me  tell  you 
a  story  for  the  dramatic  quality  of  which 
I  know  no  equal.  And  it  will  be  new 
to  you,  for  good  pains  were  taken  to 
keep  it  out  of  the  newspapers,  and  up  to 
this  time  none  of  us  who  were  part  of  the 
incident  ever  told  of  it. 

It  happened  at  the  Clarke  Uptons' 
last  winter,  just  as  they  moved  into  their 
new  and  swell  Central  Park  house,  at  a 
dinner-party — one  of  the  jolliest  I  ever 


Letter    Number    Seven  109 

attended,  and,  as  it  turned  out,  the  most 
memorable  I  was  ever  at.  We  were  a 
very  merry  party,  and  were,  I  should 
say,  about  half  or  three-quarters 
through  the  dinner  when  Mrs.  Upton 
gave  a  scream,  and  cried  to  her  hus- 
band: "Clarke!"  We  all  looked  up  to 
see — not  Mrs.  Upton,  but  there  in  the 
parted  portieres  between  the  dining- 
room  and  the  hall  stood  a  young  fellow, 
the  very  picture  of  a  Bowery  tough.  He 
had  the  typical — apparently  unshaven — 
face  of  what  we  men  call  a  "bruiser," 
wore  a  black  Derby  hat,  badly  dented  in, 
and  a  pretty  well-worn  overcoat  but- 
toned up  to  his  chin.  He  stood  there 
calmly  surveying  the  scene,  looking  first 
at  the  dinner-party  and  then  all  around 
the  room  with  an  expression  apparently 
full  of  the  keenest  interest. 

The  two  flunkies  who  were  waiting 


no  Her   Brother's    Letters 

on  us  and  the  head  butler  were  the  first 
to  recover  from  the  surprise  that  was 
upon  all  of  us,  and  made  a  concerted 
move  toward  the  man. 

"Hold  on,  boys,  hold  on,"  came  from 
the  bruiser;  "I  know  what  I'm  about, 
and  I'd  advise  you  not  to  meddle  with 
me  or  my  business,"  and  he  shot  a 
glance  at  the  flunkies  and  Joseph,  the 
butler,  that  had  lots  in  it,  I  tell  you, 
Kittens.  All  three  stood  still  where  they 
were  with  that  fellow's  eyes  on  them. 

Clarke  had  by  this  time  pulled  himself 
together,  and  as  host  it  was  now  up  to 
him. 

"Well,  then,  you  fellow,"  he  said, 
"suppose  you  tell  me  your  business." 

"Oh,  I'm  just  looking  around  to  see 
what  I  can  see,  that's  all,"  he  replied  in 
an  easy,  feel-perfectly-at-home-here 
sort  of  a  way.  And  then,  as  quick  as 


Letter    Number    Seven  in 

a  wink,  seeing  Clarke  and  a  couple  of  us 
make  a  move  toward  him,  he  said  with 
fire  fairly  shooting  out  of  those  eyes  of 
his: 

"One  minute,  gentlemen,  before  you 
go  too  far.  I  am,  or  rather  up  to 
a  year  ago  I  was,  a  prize-fighter,  and 
there's  nothing  coming  to  me  from  any 
one  here,  or  from  any  three  of  you  for 
that  matter,  that  I  couldn't  take  care  of 
— not  for  a  minute — but  I'm  not  out  for 
trouble  unless  you  want  it,  and  then  I'm 
chuck-full  of  it." 

It  was  a  bit  in  the  way  of  a  challenge 
that  some  of  us  men  there  didn't  exactly 
like,  and  as  the  young  fellow's  keen  eyes 
traveled  like  lightning  over  the  group 
(most  of  us  were  on  our  feet  by  this 
time)  he  saw  it,  and  he  said: 

"With  those  gentlemen  there"  (wav- 
ing over  to  where  we  were)  "I  have  no 


ii2  Her   Brother's    Letters 

business,  but  I  have  with  you,  sir,  for 
I  suppose  you  are  Mr.  Upton." 

Then,  turning  abruptly  to  the  flunkies 
who  had  been  moving  toward  him,  he 
said  in  a  voice  that  left  no  room  for  two 
interpretations : 

"In  your  places,  there !" 

"Come,  come,"  began  Clarke,  but  the 
fellow  interrupted: 

"Not  so  quick,  Mr.  Upton — I  have  a 
right  here,  just  as  much  right,  sir,  as 
Mrs.  Upton"  (with,  I  must  say,  a  court- 
ly bow  to  Clarke's  wife)  "and  that 
young  fellow  over  there"  (pointing  to 
Boyce  Price)  "had  in  my  sister's  room 
this  morning.  He  didn't  have  the  man- 
ners to  take  off  his  hat  when  he  was 
in  the  room,  nor  his  coat.  I  have,"  and 
with  that,  with  what  looked  like  one 
movement,  he  took  off  his  hat,  pulled  off 
his  overcoat,  dropped  them  on  the  floor, 


Letter   Number    Seven  113 

yanked  out  a  handkerchief,  passed  it 
over  his  face,  and  there  stood  before 
us  a  fine-looking  young  fellow  in  full 
evening  dress,  with  a  face  as  clean- 
shaven as  my  own. 

Gad,  Sis,  it  was  dramatic,  as  dramatic 
as  anything  I  ever  saw,  and  done  like  a 
flash.  Every  one  of  us  took  a  breath, 
and  I  couldn't  help  admiring  the  chap. 

"I'll  trouble  you  to  take  my  coat  and 
hat,"  he  said  to  one  of  the  flunkies,  and 
then  moving  a  step  or  two  in  the  room 
he  turned  to  Clarke  and  said:  "Mr. 

Upton,  my  name  is "  (I  can't  give 

his  name,  Kittens,  for  you  would  know 
it,  I  think,  from  things  he  has  written). 
We  all  looked  astonished,  at  which  he 
said :  "I  see  it  is  not  unfamiliar  to  you. 
I  knew  it  would  be  known  to  Mrs. 
Bleecker  there,  as  she  read  a  little  thing 
of  mine  at  the  Waldorf  last  week.  But 


H4  Her   Brother's    Letters 

the  reason  I  came  here  tonight,  sir,  was 
simply  to  return  the  call  of  Mrs.  Upton 
and  her  party  at  my  sister's  house.  If 
your  wife  and  her  friends  feel  that  they 
can  come  to  my  sister's  house  without 
an  invitation,  and  without  as  much  as 
knocking  at  her  door,  and  see  her  at 
her  work,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  was 
just  as  much  entitled  to  come  here  with- 
out asking  your  leave  and  see  you  at 
your  dinner.  If  the  poor  are  to  be 
'slummed'  by  the  rich  I  can't  for  the  life 
of  me  see  why  the  rich  shouldn't  be 
'slummed'  by  the  poor." 

Clarke  wanted  to  say  something  at 
this  point,  but  our  uninvited  guest  held 
up  his  hand  and  stayed  the  remark, 
whatever  it  was,  and  said : 

"There's  nothing  to  say,  sir.  There's 
nothing  more  for  me  to  say.  I  have 
said  all  that  I  came  to  say  except  this: 


Letter   Number    Seven  115 

I  apologize  to  you,  sir,  to  Mrs.  Upton 
and  your  guests,  for  this  interruption, 
and  for  coming  into  your  house  and 
room  without  an  invitation  and  with  my 
hat  on.  And  I  shall  expect  your  friend 
there  "  (pointing  to  Boyce  Price)  "to 
call  at  my  sister's  house  at  ten  o'clock 
to-morrow  morning  and  make  the  same 
apologies  to  my  sister.  I'll  trouble  you," 
he  said  to  Oscar,  the  flunky,  and,  taking 
his  overcoat  and  hat,  he  bowed,  and  in 
a  minute  we  heard  the  front  door  close, 
leaving  us  gaping  at  each  other  in  abso- 
lute amazement. 

It  takes  me  some  time  to  tell  it,  Kit- 
tens, but  actually  the  whole  thing  didn't 
take  five  minutes,  it  was  so  neatly  done 
and  quickly  over. 

You  can  imagine  that  the  dinner- 
party was  a  bit  broken  up  after  that, 
and  the  women  fairly  dropped  into  their 


n6  Her   Brother's    Letters 

chairs  from  the  tension.  But,  ye  gods 
and  little  fishes,  it  was  fine,  Kittens! 
That  chap  won  me  hands  down,  and 
later  in  the  evening  I  talked  with  the 
hall-butler  and  asked  how  he  got  into 
the  house. 

"Oh,  I  knew  him,  sir,  from  my  early 
days,  sir"  (he  didn't  say  what  his  early 
days  were),  "and  when  I  opened  the 
door  he  recognized  me  and  said,  as  he 
pushed  by  me,  'All  right,  Con,  this  is  on 
the  straight.  No  crooked  work  here. 
No  "peach"  —which  meant,  sir,  I  was 
not  to  get  a  policeman,  and  I  knew  when 
he  said  anything  he  meant  it,  sir.  I  was 
amazed  to  see  him  here,  but  I  knew  he 
was  always  straight  when  he  said  a 
thing,  sir." 

Well,  I  got  his  address,  and  next 
afternoon  after  court  was  over  I  called 
on  him,  told  him  who  I  was,  and  said 


"She  Dropped  the  Five  Dollar  Bill  On  My  Sister's 
Washboard." 


Letter    Number    Seven  117 

I  wanted  to  shake  his  hand ;  and  so  did 
Clarke,  who  went  with  me. 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,  sir,"  he  said.  "It 
is  strictly  between  us,  I  hope.  It  wasn't 
quite  right,  Mr.  Upton"  (turning  to 
Clarke),  "for  two  wrongs  never  make  a 
right.  But  I  was  in  the  back  room  of 
my  sister's  place  when  your  wife  and 
her  friends  called,  and  I  was  hot,  hot  all 
through.  I  knew  Mrs.  Upton  didn't 
mean  it  the  way  I  took  it,  and  the 
way  my  sister  took  it,  but  when 
she  dropped  the  five-dollar  bill  on 
my  sister's  washboard — I  returned  it  to 
you  this  morning  by  mail — it  was  just 
too  much,  and  I  made  up  my  mind  to 
show  to  one  woman  at  least  that  there 
wasn't  any  sense  of  decency  or  fairness 
in  this  slumming  business.  I  ask  your 
pardon,  Mr.  Upton,"  he  concluded, 
reaching  out  his  hand.  Clarke  took  it 


n8  Her   Brother's    Letters 

with  a  bang,  and  said,  like  the  man 
he  is: 

"Pardon,  man?  Not  at  all.  My 
thanks,  and  hearty  thanks  at  that.  You 
taught  us  all  a  lesson  we  shouldn't  have 
learned  in  a  thousand  years  so  well,  as 
Mrs.  Upton  said  she  would  say  to  your 
sister  this  morning  when  she  made  her 
call  of  apology." 

Now,  then,  Kittens,  this  story — and 
it's  a  true  one  to  the  letter — will  tell  you 
more  than  all  the  preaching  that  I  could 
do  to  show  you  the  foolishness  of  this 
"slumming"  business,  and  how  it  is 
taken  by  the  "slummed."  Keep  out  of 
it,  Kittens,  you  and  your  girl  friends. 
You  girls  have  no  business  with  the 
people  of  the  "other  half."  The  only 
people  who  can  go  among  them  and  do 
them  good  are  those  who  have  had  ex- 
perience so  wide  and  so  deep  as  to  com- 


Letter   Number    Seven  119 

pass  the  sorrows  and  trials  of  this 
world,  and  who  are  mature  in  sympathy, 
feeling  and  imagination.  And  as  for 
the  working-girls,  you  have  them,  Sis, 
right  in  your  own  home :  the  maids  and 
the  cook. 

Be  patient,  be  considerate  of  them: 
be  womanly  and  human  with  them 
as  you  would  want  some  one  to  be 
with  you  if  you  were  in  their  places. 
There's  where  real  charity  begins :  right 
at  home,  and,  believe,  me,  the  girl  who 
can  find  no  charity  work  at  home  is  not 
the  girl  to  do  it  outside. 

Did  Boyce  Price  go,  you  ask,  and 
apologize?  Rather!  The  little  idiot: 
he  went  from  sheer  fear.  He  was  afraid 
he'd  get  his  silly  face  pushed  in.  The 
pity  of  it  is  that  he  did  go.  If  he  hadn't 
he  might  have  "heard  something  to  his 
advantage" — if  a  good  licking  could  be 


i2o  Her   Brother's    Letters 

of  any  advantage  to  a  nincompoop  of 
his  type. 

It's  midnight.  It  never  does  for  my 
next  day's  work  to  write  you  these  let- 
ters. So  here's  a  yawny  love  to  you  and 
all  from 

Yours,  for  no  "slumming," 

LENT. 


LETTER  NUMBER  EIGHT. 


LETTER  NUMBER  EIGHT, 

IN  WHICH  THE  BROTHER  REPLIES  TO 

SOME  OF  His  SISTER'S  STRICTURES 

ON  MEN. 

Dear  Man- Angry  Kittens: 

YOU   certainly   had   your   go   at 
men   in  your  last  letter,   and 
I     couldn't     help     wondering 
whether  they — or,  perhaps,  one  in  par- 
ticular— had   ruffled   your   feathers   in 
some  way.     But  let  us  see  what  made 
you  angry  with  them. 

First,  it  was  about  Beekman  Price — 
poor  Beek! 

"And  what  do  you  think,  Lent  ?  Here 
poor,  dear  Gladys  Price  is  dead  just 
about  a  year,  and  that  nasty  husband 
of  hers,  Beekman,  with  all  his  deep  sor- 
row (deep,  indeed!),  has  gone  and  en- 

123 


124  Her    Brother's    Letters 

gaged  himself  to  Claire  Willets !  Now 
Claire  was  one  of  Gladys's  friends,  and 
she,  of  course,  used  to  go  in  and  out  of 
their  house  all  the  time.  And  in  that 
way  Beekman  got  to  know  of  her.  But 
what  makes  it  so  positively  disgusting 
to  me  is  that  Beekman  must  have  been 
in  love  with  Claire  while  Gladys  was 
alive.  For  a  man  can't  get  over  his  sor- 
row— over  the  loss  of  his  wife — and  fall 
deeply  enough  in  love  with  another  girl 
to  ask  her  to  marry  him,  all  in  one  year ! 
Surely  you,  dear  Lent,  won't  say  he  can, 
will  you  now?  Of  course  not.  It's 
positively  indecent,  that's  what  I  think !" 

Come,  now,  Kittens,  isn't  "indecent" 
a  pretty  strong  word,  and  just  because 
Beek  has  "found  himself  again,"  fallen 
in  love  with  a  girl  and  asked  her  to 
marry  him? 

Now  as  a  lawyer  I  should  say  that 


Letter   Number    Eight  125 

your  reasoning  that  Beek  was  in  love 
with  Claire  while  Gladys  was  alive  is 
hardly  good,  and  as  a  man  I  should  say 
it  is — well,  plain  rot!  Beek  isn't  that 
sort  of  chap,  sister  mine,  and  I  think  I 
know  him  better  than  you  do.  Because 
Beek  is  going  to  marry  one  of  his  first 
wife's  best  chums  is,  to  my  mind,  more 
of  a  tribute  to  that  wife  than  aught 
else.  And  by  what  possible  variety  of 
feminine  logic  do  you  arrive  at  such  an 
unjust  conclusion  as  to  a  double  affec- 
tion on  Beck's  part? 

Beek  was  honestly  and  devotedly  in 
love  with  Gladys,  and  when  she  was 
alive  he  had  no  eyes  or  heart  for  Claire 
or  any  other  girl.  His  heart  was  full 
and  his  happiness  complete.  He  looked 
upon  Claire  as  Gladys's  friend  and  as  a 
nice,  companionable  girl.  I  know,  for 
example,  that  when  Gladys  was  very  ill 


126  Her    Brother's    Letters 

at  the  time  her  first  baby  was  born,  Beek 
felt  mighty  grateful  to  Claire  for  the 
way  she  sat  up  nights  with  Gladys  and 
wouldn't  leave  her.  But  there  was  no 
love  for  her — not  the  kind  of  love  you 
mean,  at  any  rate,  any  more  than  he  felt 
that  kind  of  love  for  Nell  because  she 
was  a  brick  in  nursing  Gladys  when  she 
was  thrown  from  her  auto.  But,  bless 
your  heart,  Kittens,  a  man  doesn't  love 
every  girl  who  is  good  to  his  wife  or 
who  happens  to  be  much  in  his  house  as 
his  wife's  friend. 

Then  Gladys  became  ill,  and  Claire 
was  like  a  sister  to  her  in  her  watchful- 
ness and  care  during  those  weeks  of 
fever.  And  Beek  was  grateful  to  the 
last  degree  to  her:  he'd  have  been  a 
brute  if  he  wasn't.  And  when  Gladys 
died  he  felt  as  if  he  would  never  recover 
from  the  shock,  and  he  was  honest  in 


Letter    Number    Eight  127 

that  grief.  Thunder,  girl,  don't  I,  who 
was  with  him  for  nearly  a  week  after- 
ward, know  that  ?  In  love  with  Claire  ? 
My  conscience,  Kittens,  Beek  never 
thought  of  her  that  way. 

But  then  he  pulled  himself  together. 
He  had  to  for  the  sake  of  his  two  little 
ones  if  not  for  his  own  sake,  and  as  the 
days  went  on,  the  more  the  fact  was 
forced  upon  him  that  he  was  lonely — as 
lonely  as  only  a  man  can  be  who  has 
enjoyed  eight  years  of  absolute  happi- 
ness— is  it  any  wonder  that  he  turned 
to  Claire  ?  Who  knew  him  better :  who 
knew  his  children  better,  who  mothered 
them,  who  undressed  them  at  night 
and  dressed  them  in  the  morning,  who 
heard  their  little  "Now  I  lay  me  down 
to  sleep,"  who  was  Gladys  to  them  if 
not  Claire  ?  Claire  loved  those  children 
not  only  as  such  a  real,  womanly  girl, 


128  Her    Brother's    Letters 

with  every  instinct  of  motherhood  in 
her,  as  Claire  is,  but  she  loved  them  for 
Gladys's  sake.  And  I  know  from  her 
people  what  hard  work  they  had  to  keep 
her  away  from  the  little  ones  after 
Gladys  passed  away.  Her  big,  fine, 
womanly  heart  just  went  out  to  those 
two  motherless  kids. 

Now  I  believe,  Kittens,  in  the  theory 
that  there  is  some  indefinable  some- 
thing, I  don't  know  what  to  call  it,  ex- 
cept that  I  believe  it  is  Divine,  which 
draws  the  right  people  together,  and 
that  subtle  chord  was  all  the  time  draw- 
ing Claire  and  Beek  together.  They 
wanted  each  other,  although  neither  one 
of  them  really  knew  it.  It  happens,  dear 
sister,  that  I  know  more  about  this  little 
affair  than  you  think,  for  when  Beek 
was  here  with  me  three  months  ago  he 
told  me  all  about  it,  and  you  would  be 


"Claire  Loved  Those  Children  for  Gladys's  Sake. 


Letter   Number   Eight  129 

the  first,  Kittens,  to  cover  that  pretty 
head  of  yours  in  shame,  and  cry  out  for 
forgiveness  at  Beck's  hands,  if  you 
could  have  heard  him  speak  of  Gladys, 
and  have  seen  him  actually  fight  against 
the  feeling  that  was  slowly  but  surely 
drawing  him  to  Claire.  I  asked  him 
one  evening,  finally,  why  he  seemed  to 
resist  Claire:  why  he  kept  aloof  from 
her. 

He  said,  "Lent,  not  for  my  sake,  but 
for  Claire's  sake.  I  know  what  people 
will  say,  and  I  don't  mind  it  so  far  as  I 
am  concerned,  for  I  know  where  I  stand. 
But  there's  Claire.  She  was  as  good  as 
gold  to  Gladys :  she  has  been  a  mother 
to  the  kids,  and  aside  from  the  talk  of 
any  second  marriage  on  my  part,  there's 
always  the  point  to  consider  whether 
Claire  wouldn't  think  I  married  her  out 
of  gratitude." 


130  Her    Brother's    Letters 

"How  about  your  own  feelings  for 
Claire — just  in  a  general  way,  I  mean, 
old  man  ?"  I  asked  him. 

"There's  no  doubt  of  that,"  he  said; 
and  I  could  see  from  his  face  there 
wasn't,  either.  "Gladys  taught  me  how 
to  love  a  woman,  and  I  love  Claire  with 
that  ripeness  of  love,  if  you  may  call  it 
so,  which  a  man  must  learn,  and  which 
after  years  he  gives  to  the  woman  who 
has  taught  him.  But,  of  course,  she 
isn't  here,"  he  concluded,  and  then  he 
stood  looking  for  a  full  ten  minutes  in 
my  grate,  and  I  smoked  and  said  not  a 
word. 

Finally  I  asked,  "How  about  Claire, 
old  man?  Got  any  line  on  her  feel- 
ings?" 

"Not  the  first,"  he  said.  "I  haven't 
the  faintest  idea  how  she'd  take  it,  and 


Letter    Number    Eight  131 

I  haven't  tried  to  find  out.  It  didn't 
seem — well,  I  didn't,  that's  all." 

Well,  we  talked  as  two  fellows  can 
who  know  each  other  pretty  well,  and  it 
was  'way  into  the  night  before  we  part- 
ed. But  we  left  with  the  idea  that  he 
would  see  Claire  and  tell  her  frankly 
how  he  felt,  and  leave  it  to  her  to  decide. 
I  told  him  to  let  the  talk  that  might  fol- 
low "go  hang,"  as  we  men  say.  The 
only  thing  he'd  need  to  think  of  was 
whether  he  was  right,  and  then  leave  it 
to  Claire.  And  he  did,  and  you  know 
the  result. 

So,  Kittens,  you  see  I  was  closer  to 
this  matter  than  you  knew,  and  that  is 
why  I  was  a  bit  put  out  when  your  let- 
ter came.  Of  course,  now  you  will  say, 
"Forgive  me,  Lent:  I  didn't  know." 
But,  honest,  now,  Kittens,  wouldn't  it 
have  been  better  to  have  withheld  ex- 


132  Her    Brother's    Letters 

pressing  your  judgment,  even  to  your 
brother,  until  you  knew  more  ? 

Besides,  dear  girl,  why  didn't  you 
make  a  fuss  and  pass  immature  judg- 
ment on  Del  Farriman  when  she 
married  again — a  scant  year  after 
George  died?  Instead  of  that,  if  I  re- 
member right,  you  girls  trooped  to  her 
house  to  congratulate  her,  and  then  to 
her  wedding!  You  said  then,  "Won't 
it  be  fine  for  Del's  boys  to  have  a  father 
again!"  Well,  how  about  Beck's  two 
little  girls?  Don't  they  need  a  mother 
just  as  much,  or  can  little  girls  get  along 
better  without  a  mother  than  boys  can 
without  a  father? 

Thunder,  if  it  comes  to  that,  how 
about  May  Cast  ?  She  didn't  wait  even 
a  year,  yet  you  girls  flocked  to  her  sec- 
ond wedding!  Is  it  more  incumbent 
upon  a  man  to  wear  sackcloth  and  ashes 


Letter   Number   Eight  133 

than  for  a  woman?  Where's  your  log- 
ic, Kit?  You  say: 

"I  think  second  marriages  are  wrong, 
don't  you?" 

No,  I  don't.  I  am  in  favor  of  a  fourth 
marriage  if  through  it  two  people  can 
find  their  fullest  happiness,  and  if  with- 
out it  they  fail  of  finding  that.  I  want 
my  wife — if  ever  I  have  one — to  marry 
again  if  I  should  die  before  her,  if  the 
right  man  comes  along  and  she  loves 
him,  and  I  would  think  she  was  foolish 
if  she  failed  to  do  so  simply  because  of 
my  memory.  I  don't  believe  in  that  sort 
of  grief:  generally  it  isn't  real,  and 
where  it  is  real  it  is  unwise.  A  man  can 
be  just  as  true  to  the  memory  of  his  first 
wife  in  the  happiness  he  finds  in  another 
of  her  sex  as  by  depriving  himself  of 
that  happiness.  I  know  it  sounds  very 
noble  and  beautiful,  this  mourning 


134  Her   Brother's    Letters 

away  one's  life  for  a  departed  husband 
or  wife — that  is,  in  romances.  But  I'm 
speaking  now  of  what  is  healthiest  and 
best  for  us  on  this  very  practical  planet 
of  ours. 

I  know  a  very  fine  chap  here  in  New 
York  whose  wife  died  ten  years  ago, 
and  he  grieves  as  much  for  her  today 
as  he  did  then.  I  can't  help  admire 
and  respect  such  a  fellow  and  bow  be- 
fore such  a  grief.  But  all  the  same  I 
think  it  would  be  infinitely  better  for 
him,  and  I  know  it  would  have  been 
better  for  his  three  little  children,  if  he 
had  pulled  himself  together,  fallen  in 
love  with  some  good  woman  who  would 
have  made  him  happy  and  given  his 
children  the  joy  of  a  mother's  presence 
and  influence  in  their  home  and  lives. 

Now,  as  to  your  second  grievance 
over  men: 


Letter   Number   Eight  135 

"Fancy  the  latest!  Joyce  Peck  has 
asked  to  be  divorced  from  Clara! 
There's  a  man  for  you !  A  beast,  I  say. 
Poor  Clara!  She  has  given  her  best 
years  to  that  brute;  has  borne  him  his 
children ;  and  now  that  her  freshness  is 
gone  he's  through  with  her  and  casts 
her  off,  and  wants  to  marry  that  snip 
of  a  Grace  Ford !  That's  manhood !" 

Not  quite  so  fast,  Kittens,  dear.  That 
type  of  man  does  exist,  and  no  one  can 
loathe  him  more  than  I  do,  Sis;  but  it 
so  happens  that  Joyce  is  not  of  that 
stripe. 

I  can't  say  I  admire  Joyce  tre- 
mendously, and  it  is  not  for  me  to  com- 
ment upon  this  step  of  his,  since  our  Cin- 
cinnati firm  has  his  case.  But,  good  sis- 
ter of  mine,  there's  another  side  to  that 
story,  too.  There  always  is,  you  know 
— even  to  a  lawsuit,  unwilling  as  one 


136  Her   Brother's   Letters 

might  be  to  think  so  after  hearing  some 
lawyers  plead  for  their  clients. 

Joyce  is  not  a  society  man:  he  is  a 
student — too  much  of  a  student,  I  think, 
for  his  own  good.  The  only  things  he 
knows,  during  the  evenings,  are  his 
books  and  his  engineering  maps.  But 
Clara  knew  this  when  she  married  him, 
for  he  has  not  changed  a  particle,  and 
instead  of  trying  to  draw  him  out  of  his 
shell  she  left  him  to  withdraw  into  it 
deeper,  while  she  went  off  cantering 
here  and  there  nearly  every  evening.  Of 
course,  to  such  a  state  of  affairs  there 
is  generally  only  one  end.  Now,  I  don't 
excuse  Joyce,  except  that  Clara  said 
when  she  married  him  she  was  going 
to  settle  down,  since  Joyce  told  her  that 
his  work  wouldn't  permit  his  doing  the 
society  act.  But  she  didn't  settle  down : 
hers  isn't  the  nature  that  settles.  She's 


Letter   Number    Eight  137 

a  butterfly  who  flits  here  and  there: 
likes  the  lights,  and  the  band  playing. 
Joyce  saw  his  home  at  sixes  and  sevens, 
with  his  wife  going  out  to  dinner  nearly 
every  evening,  and  no  one  to  talk  to 
about  his  problems.  There  was  no 
evening  lamp  in  that  house,  Kittens,  and 
no  hearthstone,  and  where  those  two 
vital  elements  in  a  home  are  lacking — 
well,  look  out  for  squalls ! 

Now,  a  man  needs  a  woman's  sym- 
pathy in  his  work  if  he  is  going  to  do 
things  in  the  world  (yes,  it  is  I  that  say 
it  as  perhaps  shouldn't!),  and  if  he  can't 
get  that  sympathy  from  his  wife  in  his 
home,  where  he  has  a  right  to  find  it 
and  get  it,  mark  me,  he's  going  to  get 
it  elsewhere.  And  "elsewhere"  in 
Joyce's  case  was  Grace  Ford — a  "snip" 
in  your  eyes,  but  an  all-fired  clever  girl, 
full  of  initiative,  a  fertile  mind,  and  just 


138  Her   Brother's   Letters 

the  girl  for  Joyce  to  talk  his  work  over 
with  and  get  sympathy  and  help.  The 
point  is  there:  Joyce  should  have  mar- 
ried Grace  Ford.  But  he  didn't  know 
her  when  he  could  have  married  her, 
and  Clara  was  foolish  enough  to  let  him 
find  her  out.  And  there's  where  I  blame 
Clara  or  any  other  wife  who  lets  a  hus- 
band find  out  a  woman  who  is  better 
qualified  to  help  him  than  she  is.  If  she 
isn't  so  well  qualified  she  ought  to  make 
herself  so,  and  this  Clara  could  have 
done,  for  she  has  brains — only  she  was 
after  a  life  of  pleasure.  Well,  she's 
had  it. 

So  you  see,  Kittens,  there's  much  in 
everything:  it  all  depends  on  how  you 
look  at  it.  There's  one  thing  for  you, 
and  a  good  many  of  your  girl  friends, 
to  guard  against  in  such  matters  as 
these,  and  that  is — a  snap  judgment. 


Letter    Number    Eight  139 

Always  wait  until  you  know  both  sides 
of  a  question.  That's  a  lawyer's  train- 
ing, and  it  would  be  a  mighty  good  thing 
if  it  were  in  the  curriculum  of  every 
school  and  college  in  the  land. 

I  am  not  excusing  men :  I  am  not  de- 
fending them.  One  point  let  me  make 
clear  to  you :  There  are  scores  of  cases 
of  second  marriages  and  divorces 
where  the  men  are  to  blame,  where  they 
trample  under  their  dirty  feet  the  love 
and  sacrifice  of  some  sweet,  pure  girl 
who  has  given  all  she  had  to  give  them. 
There  are  men  walking  this  beautiful 
earth  of  ours  who  have  no  business  to 
walk  it.  But  that's  God's  business,  Sis ; 
not  yours  nor  mine.  I  am  simply  stand- 
ing up  for  the  best  there  is  in  men :  not 
their  worst.  They  have  a  best  side — 
that  side  is  generally  developed  by  the 
love  of  a  woman ;  and  I  am  always  for 


140  Her   Brother's   Letters 

giving  the  devil  his  due.  Man  is  not 
an  angel,  but  there's  no  use  in  painting 
him  blacker  than  he  is,  and  my  rule  is 
with  man,  as  with  woman:  Believe  the 
best  of  him  always  until  the  other  has 
been  proven.  But  be  sure  that  the  other 
is  proven  first:  that  is,  by  cold,  hard 
facts,  and  not  by  hearsay,  gossip  or  cir- 
cumstantial evidence.  These  latter, 
Sis,  have  condemned  many  an  innocent 
man  and  woman,  and  have  also  hanged 
a  few! 

But  honestly,  Kittens,  why  all  this 
sudden  fuss  on  your  part  about  men 
marrying  a  second  time  and  "casting 
off"  their  wives  ?  Do  you  already  hear 
the  tread  of  another  woman's  walk  on 
your  grave,  or  see  yourself  displaced? 
Rather  premature,  isn't  it? — since  you 
are  not  married — not  even  engaged! 
Or  are  you  thinking  about  both :  honest, 


Letter   Number   Eight  141 

now  ?  If  not,  why  these  thoughts  man- 
ward  and  marriageward  ?  That's 
what's  puzzling 

Your  wondering,  but  loving 

LENT. 


LETTER  NUMBER  NINE. 


LETTER  NUMBER  NINE, 

IN  WHICH  THE  BROTHER  TELLS  OF 
THE  HIGH  OPINION  HE  HAS  OF 
THE  MAN  His  SISTER  Is  EN- 
GAGED TO  MARRY. 

You  Dear,  Happy  Kittens: 

SO  YOU  found  out  at  last  the  way 
the  wind  was  blowing  with  Ned 
— and  you  are  "simply  delirious- 
ly, intoxicatingly  happy."  Of  course 
you  are,  Sis,  and  I  didn't  need  your  tele- 
gram or  your  twelve-page  letter  to  tell 
me,  either.  I  knew  you  would  be,  for 
now  you  know  what  I  knew  all  along — 
ever  since  Ned  made  a  clean  breast  of 
it  to  me  a  year  ago.  In  fact,  I  knew  it 
before  that  from  him,  although  he 
didn't  say  a  word.  But  it  gave  me  a 
splendid  chance  to  get  used  to  the  idea 

145 


146  Her   Brother's   Letters 

of  losing  my  sister.  Yes,  I  know  you 
say  in  your  letter,  "We'll  always  be  the 
same."  But  we  won't,  Sis,  just  the 
same.  It  is  Ned  now — Ned,  Ned,  Ned. 
Did  you  realize  that  in  your  twelve-page 
letter  you  mentioned  him  just  eighty- 
one  times:  only  seven  times  on  each 
sheet?  (Ned's  letter,  by-the-way,  was 
a  little  more  restrained:  he  only  men- 
tioned you  sixty-nine  times  in  eleven 
pages!  That's  what  I  call  self-poise!) 
It's  all  right,  dear:  only  from  now  on 
it's  Ned  first  and  Lent  second.  And  it 
ought  to  be.  I'm  going  to  be  "the  con- 
venient brother"!  Well,  that's  a  good 
role,  and  I'll  try  to  play  it  to  the  Queen's 
taste — Ned's  "Queen,"  I  mean,  for  in 
his  letter  you  were  his  "Queen"  six 
times.  There  were  a  few  "darling 
girls,"  "best  girl  in  the  worlds,"  "a  girl 
with  a  marvelously  fine  conception  of 


Letter    Number    Nine  147 

things,"  but  the  "Queens"  had  it! 
Well,  he's  partly  right  about  you,  and 
you  are  partly  right  about  him.  Wait 
a  minute,  Sis,  wait  a  minute !  My  con- 
science, no!  I  don't  mean  the  slightest 
disrespect  to  Ned — not  a  whit.  My 
forehead  touches  the  floor  this  instant! 
But  you  see,  Kittens,  I've  known  Ned 
pretty  well:  no  other  chap  knows  bet- 
ter what  a  fine  fellow  he  is:  only,  just 
now — well,  you  see,  if  he  were  all  you 
picture  him  he'd  simply  be  divine,  you 
know. 

And  if  he  were  divine  you  couldn't 
live  with  him — that  is,  not  comfort- 
ably, you  know.  He's  all  you  say 
he  is — and  more.  And  that  "more" 
you'll  find  out  when  he's  your  husband 
(pretty  blush,  Kittens,  just  as  pretty  as 
it  could  be).  Then  you'll  see  Ned  for 
what  he  is : "  not  out  of  the  eyes  of  "de- 


148  Her   Brother's   Letters 

lirious"  happiness,  but  out  of  the  eyes 
of  experience.  For  you  know,  Kittens 
dear  ( although,  come  to  think  of  it,  you 
don't),  men  are  just  a  little  different 
after  marriage  from  what  they  are  be- 
fore. Some  are  different,  and  not  for 
the  better:  some  are  otherwise.  And 
Ned  is  one  of  the  otherwise  kind.  I 
know  him  pretty  well :  I've  seen  him  in 
some  pretty  tight  places,  but  I  never 
saw  him  "duck"  yet.  Ned  never 
"shone"  in  the  way  that  some  of  the 
fellows  did  who  were  forever  hanging 
around  you  at  your  beck  and  call,  and 
always  on  the  spot  when  you  dropped 
that  inevitable  handkerchief  that  a  girl 
never  seems  to  be  able  to  put  where  it 
won't  drop!  He's  not  one  of  the  bril- 
liant sort:  he's  not  what  we  men  call 
a  "shiner."  But  you'll  always  know 
where  to  find  Ned,  and  that  will  be  a  very 


Letter   Number   Nine  149 

comfortable  feeling  for  you  in  your  life 
with  him.  He  will  wear  well!  Balzac 
hits  off  you  two  very  well  when  he  says : 
"To  be  happy  with  one  you  love  you 
must  have  opposite  characters  and 
identical  tastes."  The  "opposite  char- 
acter" part  comes  in  that  Ned  being  so 
much  older  will  have  the  wisdom  born 
of  experience — the  only  wisdom  worth 
having.  He's  ten  years  older  than  you 
are,  and  that  is  a  good,  safe  difference, 
for  a  man  doesn't  know  much  (although 
he  thinks  he  does)  before  he  is  thirty- 
two.  And  it's  a  good  age  from  your 
side,  for  to  be  as  young  as  a  man  a 
woman  should  be  at  least  six  years 
younger,  and,  to  my  mind,  ten  is  even 
better. 

I  remember  how  fearful  he  was 
when  he  spoke  about  you  to  me  that  his 
moderate  income  would  influence  you  to 


150  Her   Brother's    Letters 

be  nothing  but  a  sister  to  him!  But  I 
told  him  he  was  dead  wrong  there,  al- 
though I  notice  it  took  him  a  year,  all 
the  same,  to  screw  up  his  courage  and 
believe  me  right.  I  gave  him  a  long 
talk  on  this :  that  he  mustn't  get  the  no- 
tion in  his  head  that  you  expected  to 
start  with  him  where  you'd  leave  off 
with  the  Governor !  But  he  was  full  of 
the  comforts  that  surrounded  you,  and 
all  that,  and  three  months  after  our  first 
talk  he  came  to  me  with  exactly  the  same 
fear,  picking  up  our  argument  just 
where  we  left  it  the  first  time.  Was  it 
fair  to  you,  and  so  forth,  and  so  forth  ? 
If  he  hadn't  been  in  such  dead  earnest 
I  would  have  laughed  at  him.  I  told 
him  his  two  thousand  a  year  was  better 
for  both  of  you  than  the  Governor's  two 
hundred  thousand.  It  would  compel 
you  to  start  just  as  the  Governor  did 


Letter    Number    Nine  151 

with  the  mater,  in  a  small  cottage,  and 
that  you'd  get  together,  as  did  they,  in 
a  way  that  nothing  else  can  bring  two 
people  together.  You  would  have 
something  to  strive  for:  to  save  for, 
and,  after  all,  it's  self-denial  and  sacri- 
fice that  bring  people  really  together. 
I  told  him  that  it  was  an  old-fashioned 
idea,  but  I  knew  that  idea  was  in  your 
heart  as  it  is  in  the  heart  of  every  girl 
of  the  right  sort  who  loves  a  chap. 

You'll  have  the  time  of  your  lives  in 
your  little  home,  beginning  with  little 
and  growing  into  things  as  they  come 
to  you.  For  grow  you  two  will.  Ned 
is  not  the  sort  of  a  chap  to  stand  still. 
I  know  he  has  the  confidence  of  the  best 
business  men  of  Cincinnati,  and  that  is 
a  starting-point  for  a  chap  second  to 
none.  I  remember  last  spring  hearing 
a  lot  of  men  at  the  Merchants'  Club 


152  Her    Brother's    Letters 

talking  about  Ned,  and  I  realized  then 
that  their  eyes  were  on  him,  and,  more 
than  that,  they  had  confidence  in  him. 
Other  chaps  have  said  to  me:  "Ned 
hasn't  done  much,"  but  they  forget  that 
it  is  sometimes  what  a  man  doesn't  do 
as  often  as  what  he  does  do  that  attracts 
the  attention  of  men.  When  these  very 
same  fellows  who  spoke  of  Ned  were 
bowling  in  their  autos,  or  having  a 
game  of  one  hundred  points  of  billiards 
at  the  club  at  noon,  Ned  was  working 
away  for  dear  life.  I  remember  trying 
him  one  day.  "Come  on,  Ned,"  I  said 
after  lunch,  "let's  have  a  turn  at  bil- 
liards." "No,  thanks,  old  man,  not 
now,"  he  replied;  "I'll  play  you  this 
evening  if  you  wish,"  and  although  I 
urged  him  and  made  rather  light  of  his 
getting  back  to  the  office,  and  although 
he  had  every  reason  to  stand  well  with 


Letter   Number   Nine  153 

me  as  the  brother  of  his  "beloved," 
there  was  "nothing  doing !"  Twice  after 
that  I  tried  to  lure  him  from  his  work 
in  daylight  hours,  but  I  might  just  as 
well  have  tried  to  move  the  Flatiron 
Building.  Now  that's  the  stuff,  shown 
in  little  things,  that  men  are  made  of. 

Now,  don't  show  Ned  this  letter,  and 
I'll  tell  you  a  story  about  him.  You 
know,  of  course,  he  was  doing  musical 
work  for  "The  News"  in  his  college 
days.  Well,  one  day  the  owner  of  the 
paper  called  him,  and  told  him  a  certain 
artist  was  to  appear  that  evening  for 
the  first  time  in  a  public  concert;  that 
this  artist  was  a  friend  of  his  family, 
particularly  of  his  wife,  and  that  he 
wanted  some  nice  things  said  of  her  in 
the  paper  next  morning.  The  next  day 
the  paper  contained  a  fulsome  notice  of 
the  young  singer,  and  old  called 


154  Her    Brother's    Letters 

Ned  into  his  office  when  he  reported 
that  afternoon  for  assignments,  and 
acknowledged  the  notice. 

"I  didn't  write  it,  Mr.  ,"  said 

Ned. 

"How  was  that?"  asked  the  old 
gentleman. 

"I  couldn't,  Mr.  ,"  replied  Ned. 

"I  should  have  gone  to  that  concert 
lacking  the  one  thing  that  a  critic  should 
have  when  he  goes  to  hear  or  see  what- 
ever he  is  to  criticise:  the  right  to  say 
what  he  honestly  thinks." 

I  heard  about  this  incident  from  the 
old  man's  secretary,  not  from  Ned,  and 
he  told  me  how  the  old  man  grunted 
with  disgust  and  turned  to  his  desk. 
Ned  went  to  the  managing  editor,  ten- 
dered his  resignation,  and  the  next  day 
the  old  man  sent  for  him,  asked  him  to 
remain,  and  tendered  him  the  position 


Letter   Number   Nine  155 

of  regular  musical  critic  of  the  paper  if 
he  would  leave  college.  Now  Ned  need- 
ed the  money  sorely,  as  I  happened  to 
know,  but  he  refused,  saying  that  his 
college  course  meant  more  for  him  than 
any  position  on  the  paper.  But  I  knew 
Ned  well  enough  to  know  that  no 
amount  of  dollars  could  have  induced 
him  to  work  for  a  man  who  had,  even 
for  a  single  time,  so  forgotten  his  own 
self-respect  and  the  honor  of  his  paper, 
and  had  failed  to  give  Ned  credit  for 
either.  A  year  after  that  I  was  talking 
to  the  old  man,  and  I  mentioned  Ned 
and  this  incident  to  him.  He  turned  to 
me  like  a  flash,  and  his  keen  gray  eyes 
fairly  snapped  as  he  said :  "Carson,  I'd 
give  half  my  interest  in  the  paper  to 
have  on  my  staff  six  men  like  that. 
They  would  make  'The  News'  the  great- 
est power  in  New  England." 


156  Her   Brother's   Letters 

Now  that's  the  way  Ned  has  done 
things  right  along,  and  in  his  law  prac- 
tice he  has  stood  for  the  same  ster- 
ling honesty,  never  swerving  a  hair's 
breadth.  I  know  of  two  bully  good  cases 
— I  mean  now  from  the  financial  side — 
that  he  could  have  had,  in  fact  he  was 
urged  to  take,  and  they  would  have 
meant  big  money  to  him.  But  he  didn't 
like  the  looks  of  the  cases,  didn't  have 
confidence  in  the  firms  that  wanted  to 
retain  him,  and  he  declined  and  stood 
pat.  All  this  is  in  line  for  a  success  that 
may  come  slower,  but  when  it  does  come 
it  sticks,  and  that's  the  kind  of  a  success 
that  Ned  is  building  up. 

You're  safe  with  such  a  chap — safer 
than  with  any  other  man  I  know 
of.  Ned's  morals  are  clean  and  his 
hands  are  clean,  and  I  don't  know  a  fel- 
low in  all  my  circle  of  friends  who  has 


Letter   Number   Nine  157 

ideals  that  are  high  and  yet  so  possible 
for  every  man  to  attain.  I  grant  you 
Ned  isn't  much  as  looks  go:  he  will 
never  cut  much  of  a  figure  in  the  dance, 
but  he's  all  there  when  it  comes  to  the 
things  that  count,  and  that  is  what  my 
sister,  and  any  other  fellow's  sister, 
wants  in  a  man,  if  only  more  girls  had 
the  sense  to  see  it  and  know  it. 

I'm  prouder  of  you  than  ever,  Kit- 
tens, proud  that  my  sister  measured 
up  to  my  standard  of  her  and  had  the 
good  sense  to  turn  from  the  chaps  that 
hovered  around  her  and  gave  the  most 
precious  feeling  that  a  girl  can  give  a 
fellow  to  the  right  chap.  I  never  doubt- 
ed you  for  an  instant,  although  I  con- 
fess once  in  a  while  the  rumors  I  heard 
and  read  about  you  in  "The  Enquirer" 
annoyed  me.  But  I  always  clung  to  the 
belief  that  my  sister  was  true  gold,  and 


158  Her   Brother's   Letters 

that  when  the  time  came  her  true  na- 
ture would  lead  her  to  give  her  heart 
to  the  one  who  deserved  it  and  who  has 
the  love  and  the  consideration  to  take 
care  of  it  and  the  life  that  goes  with  it. 
God  bless  you,  Sis,  and  remember  your 
old-time  chum  and  brother  asks  you,  as 
one  of  his  last  words,  to  take  these  little 
lines  into  your  married  life.  You  can 
live  by  them,  Kittens : 

"In  essentials,  unity. 

In  non-essentials,  liberty. 

In  all  things,  charity." 
I'll  wire  you  what  train  I'll  come  on 
next  week.  Meantime,  kiss  the  mater 
for  me,  and  tell  the  Governor  that  I'm 
with  him  heart  and  soul  when  he  said 
to  you :  "Kittens,  you'll  bring  me  a  son 
I'll  be  proud  of,"  although  it  looked  a  bit 
queer  on  paper  when  I  first  read  it !  Tell 
Nell  she  and  I  will  keep  each  other  com- 


Letter   Number   Nine  159 

pany  in  our  single  blessedness  (  ! )  over 
the  chessboard  while  you  and  Ned  are 
— well,  fill  it  in  yourself  for 

Your  joyful  and  devoted 

LENT. 


THE  SISTER'S  ANSWER  TO  HER 
BROTHER'S  LETTERS. 


THE  SISTER'S  ANSWER  TO  HER 
BROTHER'S  LETTERS, 

IN  WHICH  "KITTENS/'  Now  MRS.  ED- 
WARD KING,  TELLS  How  SHE  LIKED 
WHAT  HER  BROTHER  WROTE  HER. 

You  Dear  Old  Lent: 

I  WISH  that  I  had  you  here  this  min- 
ute that  I  might  give  you  a  good 
bear's  hug  and  tell  you  how  dearly 
I  love  you  and  how  truly  I  thank  you 
for  your  wise  and  kind  guidance  of  this 
silly,  scatterbrained  little  sister ! 

The  reason  for  this  violent  attack  of 
affection  is  the  fact  that  I  have  been  re- 
reading your  letters  to  me,  written  be- 
fore I  was  married.  I  came  upon  the 
packet,  duly  tied  up  and  labeled  "Lent's 
Preachments,"  when  sorting  over  an 
old  catch-all  trunk.  I  sat  right  down  on 
163 


1 64  The   Sister's   Answer   to 

the  floor  then  and  there  and  read  every 
word  of  them.  It  was  quite  a  different 
girl,  Lent  dear,  who  read  them  today 
from  the  one  who  first  received  them. 
I  was  indignant  then — all  the  more  so 
that  I  had  to  fight  my  own  inner  con- 
sciousness (it  kept  sneaking  in  the 
thought  that  you  were  right)  and  Nell's 
gentle  championship  of  your  wider  ex- 
perience and  disinterested  love  for  me — 
for  Nell  always  sees  your  side  of  every 
subject,  I  happen  to  notice.  I  called  you 
"poky"  and  old-fashioned,  over-par- 
ticular, extreme. 

You  know,  dear,  that  girls  like  above 
all  things  to  do  as  the  others  do — and 
what  a  tremendous  influence  their  ex- 
amples have  upon  each  other  they  have 
little  idea! — and  all  the  girls  did  wear 
low-necked  gowns  to  dances,  and  as 
long  as  the  bodices  were  perfectly  mod- 


o 

to 


Her    Brother's    Letters  165 

est  in  cut  I  could  see  no  harm  in  them. 
But  after  your  letter  came  I  could  not 
do  it.  I  was  not  convinced  that  you 
were  right,  but  when  the  girls  wondered 
and  questioned  about  why  I  did  not  do 
as  the  rest  did  I  quoted  your  arguments 
— and  in  defense  of  you  I  converted 
myself. 

Do  you  remember  the  lawyer  who 
was  suddenly  asked:  "Are  you  always 
of  your  own  opinion?"  And  he  an- 
swered, laughing  at  himself:  "Yes, 
when  I  begin  to  talk."  That  was  my 
case.  I  could  not  resist  my  own  elo- 
quence. 

To  tell  the  truth,  I  found  that  a  white 
gown  with  lace  filling  in  the  space  from 
the  edge  of  the  low-cut  bodice  to  the 
throat  was  really  most  becoming — but 
when  I  had  a  perfect  dream  of  a  frock 
that  looked  as  though  a  softly  blushing 


1 66  The    Sister's    Answer   to 

pink  rose  had  obligingly  turned  into  a 
gown,  and  my  glass  told  me  flattering 
things,  I  was  really  cross  for  a  little 
about  having  to  fill  in  the  neck  with 
white  and  spoil  the  rose  effect.  I  was 
going  to  the  Beekmans',  too,  where  I 
knew  that  I  should  see  Ned.  Suddenly 
it  occurred  to  me  to  use  fine  pink  tulle 
instead  of  white;  and,  gathered  in 
lightly,  leaving  the  tiniest  of  Vs  front 
and  back,  it  was  extremely  becoming — 
"though  I  say  it  myself  as  shouldn't." 

Judge  of  my  delight  when  Ned  said 
the  other  day  that  he  had  been  building 
barriers  about  his  heart  to  defend  it 
from  me  for  some  time,  but  that  the 
evening  at  the  Beekmans'  "finished" 
him,  adding — please  believe  that  I  am 
blushing,  Lent — "It  was  not  that  you 
were  a  perfect  vision  of  loveliness — you 
were  always  that  in  my  thoughts,  but 


Her   Brother's   Letters  167 

that  veil  thing  over  your  neck  seemed 
to  proclaim  you  the  most  modest,  wom- 
anly, refined  ideal  of  girls,  and  there 
was  nothing  left  of  me  that  was  not 
adoring  you.  By  Jove,  Kittens ! — a  girl 
should  seem  like  one  of  those  exquisite 
lilies,  such  as  we  see  at  Easter,  just  the 
incarnation  of  purity  and  sweetness,  if 
she  would  occupy  the  shrine  that  a  fel- 
low keeps  for  the  woman  he  hopes  to 
have  for  his  wife  some  day." 

That  is  the  sort  of  girl  I  dream  of 
now,  Lent,  when  I  think  of  my  blessed 
roly-poly  baby-girl  growing  into  maid- 
enhood. Jimmineddy !  how  much  high- 
er our  ideals  are  when  we  fit  them  on  to 
those  whom  we  love  very  tenderly!  I 
think  the  best  model  a  girl  could  follow 
would  be  her  ideal  of  what  she  would 
wish  her  own  daughter  to  be.  One  does 
not  have  to  be  a  mother  to  know  such 


1 68  The    Sister's    Answer   to 

things.  Every  woman  is  a  mother  at 
heart. 

Have  you  noticed  that  I  wrote  three 
whole  pages  without  once  mentioning 
Ned's  name  ? 

So  remarkable  a  phenomenon  could 
occur  only  because  that  young  man  is 
sitting  at  the  table  by  my  side,  poring 
over  some  old  law-papers  that  he  had 
to  bring  home,  lacking  time  enough  at 
the  office,  and  I  thought  the  best  way  to 
secure  him  from  interruption  and  me 
from  temptation  was  for  me  to  write 
to  you. 

I  wanted  to  "talk  back"  after  reading 
your  letters  to  that  silly  girl  who  did  not 
know  how  to  appreciate  them. 

I  lingered  long  over  your  second  let- 
ter. Do  you  remember  it?  The  one 
wherein  you  gave  that  dreadful  picture 
of  the  girls'  disgusting  conduct  toward 


Her    Brother's    Letters  169 

their  matinee  idol.  It  was  revolting! 
and  I  wish  every  girl  in  the  land  could 
read  that  letter. 

You  don't  think  for  a  minute,  I  hope, 
dear,  that  your  sister  could  have  acted 
in  the  way  you  so  graphically  describe ! 
I  might  have  been  on  the  outer  fringe 
of  the  crowd,  but  never,  oh  never,  any 
nearer — but  to  be  seen  there  at  all  would 
have  been  a  disgrace  that  your  warning 
kept  me  from.  Ned  says  that  "when  a 
woman  throws  herself  at  a  man's  feet 
one  kind  of  male  creature  steps  on  her, 
using  her  as  a  pedestal  for  his  vanity; 
the  better  sort  of  fellow  is  disgusted  and 
pained  that  anything  of  the  same  sex 
as  those  whom  he  loves  and  honors 
should  so  cheapen  herself." 

He  once  knew  a  man  who  was  pretty 
well  acquainted  with  a  popular  actor, 
and  the  actor  said  that  nearly  every  mail 


170  The   Sister's   Answer   to 

brought  him  an  effusion  from  some  hys- 
terical girl,  adding,  "I  rarely  read  them. 
I  hand  them  over  to  my  wife — they 
amuse  her — some  of  them  would  make 
you  seasick!" 

What  a  boon  it  would  be  if  girls  could 
occasionally  know  how  men  regard 
things,  to  see  their  conduct  from  a 
man's  point  of  view — if  the  criticism 
could  be  kindly,  and  not  directed  too 
pointedly  at  their  own  particular  foibles 
and  follies  at  the  moment  that  they  are 
bent  upon  committing  them — in  short, 
if  every  girl  could  have  a  dear,  fussy 
old  brother  Lent,  just  like  mine! 

Especially  valuable  would  it  be  when 
a  girl  wants  to  find  out  about  her  men 
friends. 

Only  men  are  really  competent  to 
judge  men,  just  as  girls  are  the  best 
judges  of  girls.  If  a  girl  is  a  favor- 


Her   Brother's    Letters  171 

ite  with  her  own  sex  you  may  be  sure 
she  is  the  right  sort. 

What  a  service  you  did  for  dear  Nell ! 
Fancy  such  a  splendid  girl  sacrificed 
for  life  to  that  cad! 

Oh,  how  I  laughed  as  I  reread  the 
letter  which  recalled  my  literary  aspira- 
tions as  a  club-woman!  I  was  so 
pleased  with  myself,  and  so  in  love  with 
my  fine  phrases  in  the  paper  that  I  was 
to  read  before  the  august  body  of  "The 
Tuesday  Club." 

I  had  been  trembling  in  my  boots  at 
the  prospect  of  facing  all  those  women 
—and  your  letter  just  pricked  the  bubble 
of  my  vanity  and  I  had  no  courage  left, 
so  my  words  of  weighty  wisdom  were 
lost  to  the  world ! 

As  I  was  only  a  spectator  after  that, 
and  had  abandoned  all  idea  of  taking 
any  active  part,  I  was  "at  leisure  from 


172  The    Sister's    Answer   to 

myself"  to  observe  the  others.  The 
whole  business  had  not  the  true  ring, 
Lent — there  was  no  sincerity  and  sim- 
plicity in  it.  They  all  posed  as  being 
clever,  and  those  who  were  really  clever 
were  too  self-conscious. 

These  meteors  had  each  a  group  of 
satellites — I'm  afraid  my  astronomy  is 
getting  a  little  mixed,  but  never  mind — 
who  applauded  everything  they  said,  but 
there  was  more  or  less  rivalry  and  jeal- 
ousy. Somehow  the  clever  ones  were 
not  liked  so  well  as  those  who  made  no 
pretensions  and  were  just  kind  and 
commonplace.  For  all  were  not  kind: 
I  heard  a  good  many  "catty"  remarks, 
and  I  am  glad  that  you  saved  me  from 
their  uncharity. 

The  "pose"  deceived  me  at  first.  One 
woman  read  a  paper  on  "Ideals"  which 
opened  like  this:  "You  are  all  doubtless 


Her    Brother's    Letters  173 

familiar  with  Plato's  immortal  definition 
that  the  ideal  is  the  archetypal  essence  of 
all  things,  subsumed  under  one  concept" 
— and  all  around  the  room  I  saw  self- 
satisfied  smirks  and  glances  inter- 
changed. I  felt  so  out  of  it.  I  could 
not  even  remember  the  first  word  of  the 
"immortal  definition,"  and  taking  my 
courage  in  both  hands  I  asked  the  lady, 
when  she  had  finished  reading  her 
paper,  to  repeat  it  to  me.  I  wrote  it 
down  and  learned  it,  or  I  could  not  quote 
it  now  to  save  my  life ! 

I  belong  to  a  little  club  here,  of  six 
or  eight  women,  who  meet  once  a  fort- 
night at  the  hour  for  afternoon  tea  at 
each  other's  houses. 

There  are  no  rules.  We  just  agreed 
among  ourselves  that  anything  interest- 
ing or  helpful  that  we  have  learned  from 
our  reading,  experience  or  contact  with 


174  The    Sister's    Answer   to 

others  we  will  share  when  we  meet. 
Naturally  it  is  a  stimulus  to  read  and 
observe. 

We  talk  quite  naturally  of  that  which 
interests  us,  and  welcome  more  warmly 
anything  that  has  to  do  with  our  babies, 
our  housekeeping  or  home-making  than 
we  do  any  other  helpful  suggestion. 

The  best  sign  is  that  we  grow  more 
and  more  fond  of  each  other  and  feel 
that  we  are  forming  lifelong  friend- 
ships. 

I  bring  home  to  Ned  all  that  I  have 
heard,  and  I  am  glad  to  have  fresh  ma- 
terial for  his  entertainment — or  even 
his  amusement  —  for  he  sometimes 
laughs  at  us  a  little  in  his  dear,  kindly 
way. 

You  would  have  laughed  if  you  could 
have  known  the  effect  upon  me  of  read- 
ing your  letter  about  dancing  this  after- 


Her    Brother's   Letters  175 

noon.  All  your  criticisms  at  first  scarce- 
ly reached  my  consciousness,  but  the 
letter  stirred  delightful  memories  and 
roused  the  desire  to  dance,  to  feel  my 
feet  twinkling  once  more  in  time  to  that 
dear,  delightful  music !  It  was  like  the 
smell  of  powder  to  an  old  war-horse. 

When  Ned  came  in  this  evening  the 
spell  was  still  upon  me  and  T  just  seized 
him  and  waltzed  him  around  and 
around  our  wee  parlor — to  the  accom- 
paniment of  his  panting  whistle  and  my 
dulcet  tones,  until  we  stopped  for  lack 
of  breath. 

He  is  such  a  dear — he  fell  in  with  my 
mood  as  readily  as  though  not  my 
wishes  only  but  my  very  feelings  ani- 
mated his  actions.  It  is  the  "little  things 
all  the  time"  that  prove  love  and  make 
happiness. 

I  think  you  are  quite  right  about  the 


176  The    Sister's    Answer    to 

lack  of  grace  in  the  manner  of  holding 
a  partner  that  some  men  have ;  but  lack 
of  grace  is  not  the  worst  thing.  There 
are  some  men  who  hold  one  too  tightly. 

Mother  told  me  that  if  dropping  my 
han$  down  between  my  partner  and  my- 
self, instead  of  placing  it  on  the  man's 
arm,  was  not  a  sufficient  hint,  I  could  be 
sure  that  his  action  was  not  from  in- 
advertence— and  I  should  stop  dancing 
at  once  on  some  pretext  so  transparent 
as  to  show  that  it  was  a  pretext  and  I 
was  displeased.  It  never  happened  but 
once. 

I  think  as  you  do  about  the  two-step. 
It  is  a  romp,  not  a  dance.  But,  do  you 
know,  there  are  times  when  a  girl  feels 
as  though  she  had  springs  in  her  heels 
and  she  wants  to  romp?  But  waltzing 
is  the  very  poetry  of  motion.  I  scarcely 
remembered  whom  I  was  dancing  with 


Her    Brother's   Letters  177 

— unless  it  was  Ned,  and  he  rarely  went 
to  dances. 

Your  letter  spoke  of  the  minuet.  It 
is  beautiful  to  watch,  but  it  belongs  to  a 
more  stately  and  more  artificial  time 
than  ours,  I  am  afraid.  Still,  why  it  is 
not  revived  I  can't  for  the  life  of  me 
imagine.  I  was  reading  about  old 
dances  recently — the  pavane  and  the 
sarabande — and  I  learned  to  my  sur- 
prise that  it  was  customary  for  the  cav- 
alier to  "salute"  the  lady  upon  leaving 
her  by  way  of  recognition  for  the  pleas- 
ure exchanged;  and  certain  stately 
dances  were  punctuated  at  intervals 
with  such  salutes,  not  only  on  the  hand 
but  on  the  cheek  as  well ! 

What  kind  of  letters  do  you  think  the 
Lents  of  that  period  wrote  to  their  sis- 
ters when  the  custom  first  came  in? 

It  is  true,  what  you  said  about  not 


178  The    Sister's   Answer   to 

meeting  the  nicest  men  at  dances — the 
earnest  fellows  who  mean  to  make  their 
way  to  the  top.  The  late  hours  are  hard 
on  them — and  women  are  stupid  not  to 
adapt  the  hours  of  their  entertainments 
to  the  needs  and  pleasures  of  those 
whom  they  are  trying  to  please. 

I  used  to  get  quite  tired  and  sleepy 
and  waste  all  the  evening  at  home  just 
waiting  for  the  time  to  come  to  go  to  a 
dance.  The  "Cinderella"  dance  was  a 
good  idea. 

The  letter  that  really  pleased  me  when 
I  got  it  was  the  one  about  the  kind  of 
girls  men  really  like.  For,  do  you  know 
that  you  sketched  a  portrait  to  the  life 
of — guess  who  ?  Nell,  and  no  mistake ! 

Did  you  "look  into  your  heart  and 
write,"  as  young  authors  are  told  to  do, 
fair  sir? 

Ah,  if  you  and  Nell  could  only  over- 


Her    Brother's    Letters  179 

hear  my  prayers  you  might  "learn  some- 
thing to  your  advantage,"  as  the  news- 
paper "personals"  say — just  a  little  sug- 
gestion that  might  set  you  thinking — 
you  dear,  stupid  old  Lent ! 

But  to  go  back  to  generalities.  It  is 
true  that  girls  are  dense  about  the  ways 
that  please  men.  They  must  judge  us 
from  "straws,"  though  it  is  not  always 
fair.  When  a  girl  is  considerate  of  a 
fellow's  time,  strength,  and  pocket, 
when  she  puts  herself  in  real  sympathy 
with  him,  his  interests,  aims,  ambitions, 
is  tender  in  speaking  of  the  sorrows  and 
misfortunes  of  others — it  all  tells,  and 
is  very  "beguiling,"  as  Ned  says. 

No  really  sensible  girls  mind  going  to 
the  theatre  in  a  street  car.  They  do  it 
every  day,  but  they  are  thoughtless  or 
feel  awkward  in  suggesting  it,  fearing 
to  imply  to  the  young  man  that  his 


i8o  The    Sister's   Answer   to 

pocketbook  is  too  light  for  even  so  small 
an  expense. 

Girls  are  often  lots  better  than  they 
seem.  They  are  only  silly  and  a  little 
stupid.  Love  acts  upon  them  like  spring 
sunshine  on  the  earth — all  sorts  of  beau- 
tiful things  appear. 

I,  being  a  married  woman,  while  I 
have  not  yet  forgotten  how  to  be  a  girl 
and  know  how  girls  feel,  and  yet  with 
the  advantage  of  the  confidential,  dis- 
interested advice  and  the  point  of  view 
of  two  of  the  best  and  manliest  men  that 
God  ever  made — that's  one  for  you, 
Lent ! — I  am  going  to  use  my  influence 
to  "coach"  the  girls  of  my  acquaintance 
and  tell  them  a  few  things  that  I  have 
learned. 

I  feel  now  just  as  I  do  when  I  lift  my 
chiffon  veil  and  everything  is  clear  to 
my  eyes  that  was  a  little  misty  and  un- 


Her    Brother's    Letters  181 

certain  before.  That  is  one  effect  that 
marriage  seems  to  have.  I  think  young 
married  women  might  do  a  lot  of  good 
to  the  girls  whom  they  know  if  they 
tried. 

But  oh,  Lent,  of  all  that  precious 
batch  of  letters  the  last  was  the  best! 
It  was  a  beautiful  letter,  and  I  shall 
keep  it  as  long  as  I  live.  Did  Ned  really 
mention  my  name  sixty-nine  times  in  his 
letter  to  you,  and  call  me  all  those  lovely 
things?  I  am  so  glad!  It  is  nice  to 
have  them  on  record,  and  I  am  going 
to  put  that  especial  letter  with  those  that 
Ned  has  written  me.  Is  not  that  an 
honor? — and  some  day  perhaps  I  shall 
read  them  to  my  daughter,  when  the 
right  love  comes  into  her  life — bless  her ! 
Indeed,  I  shall  keep  all  your  letters  and 
read  them  to  her  as  a  help  in  instilling 


1 82  The    Sister's    Answer   to 

the  right  ideas  and  making  her  like  the 
fair  lily  of  her  Daddy's  ideal. 

All  that  you  say  of  Ned  is  perfectly 
true,  and  far,  far  more.  For  sheer  lov- 
ableness  he  is  unsurpassable.  He  is  not 
just  what  I  thought  him — but  thanks  be 
to  the  Providence  that  watches  over 
thoughtless  girls'  happiness,  he  is  so 
much  better,  finer,  nobler,  everything! 
He  has  the  caretaking,  provident,  pur- 
poseful, steady  nature  that  my  happy- 
go-lucky  nature  needs  as  a  balance- 
wheel. 

You  say  that  Ned  is  not  much  to  look 
at.  I  don't  know  what  you  mean  by 
that.  He  certainly  has  the  most  ex- 
pressive eyes  I  ever  saw  in  my  life — 
and  don't  you  think  he  has  a  perfectly 
fascinating  smile?  I  do.  As  for  his 
nose,  its  very  imperfection  gives  char- 


Her    Brother's    Letters  183 

acter  to  his  face.  I  don't  care  for 
"handsome  men" ;  they  seem  a  bit  wom- 
anish. 

As  for  pecuniary  matters  —  could 
mortal  woman  want  anything  lovelier 
than  this  wee  cottage  of  ours!  Every 
article  in  it  has  a  pleasant  history  or 
suggestion.  I  have  everything  I  want, 
and  I  just  love  to  make  every  dollar  do 
its  full  duty  for  Ned's  sake  and  Baby's ! 
Why,  when  I  show  him  something  that 
I  have  made  over  or  bought  at  little  ex- 
pense, he  thinks  I  am  a  perfect  wonder. 
I  would  not  exchange  the  approval  I  see 
in  his  eyes  for  a  carte  blanche  order  on 
Worth!  The  old  proverb  says,  "Con- 
tent is  rich" ;  I  am  therefore  fabulously 
wealthy,  for  I  don't  want  any  more.  Of 
course,  as  time  goes  on  I  hope  to  add 
little  touches  here  and  there  to  the  home 


1 84  The    Sister's    Answer 

nest.    Meantime  I  am  "as  happy  as  the 
day  is  long." 

Next  month,  as  you  may  know,  father 
and  mother  are  coming  to  make  us  a 
bit  of  a  visit,  and  my  head  is  full  of 
pleasant  plans  and — Ned  is  through  his 
work  and  I  must  stop  No  need  to  apol- 
ogize— you  always  understand. 

Good-by,  dear,  and  God  bless  you ! 
Your  truly  loving 

KITTENS. 


ONE  OF  KITTENS'S  LETTERS  TO 
HER  BROTHER. 


ONE  OF  KITTENS'S  LETTERS  TO 
HER  BROTHER, 

IN  WHICH  SHE  TELLS  HER  BROTHER 
How  NED  PROPOSED  TO  HER. 

My  Dear,  Dear  Lent: 
"VWyHAT  will  you  think  of  your 
\ft/  little  sister?  And  yet  you 
knew  all  the  time  where 
Ned's  interest  was.  Everybody  seems 
to  have  known  except  myself.  I  never 
thought  it  was  /  he  cared  for.  How 
shall  I  tell  you  about  it  in  any  straight 
sort  of  fashion?  My  pen  wants  to 
hurry  and  tell  everything  all  at  once. 
What  possessed  me  I  don't  know.  We 
were  alone  in  the  library  last  evening 
when  I  finished  my  letter  to  you.  Ned 
came  in  early  in  the  evening  and 
brought  me  a  new  magazine  to  read; 

187 


1 88  One    of    Kittens's    Letters 

he  has  quite  often  come  in  when  I  am 
writing  to  you,  but  won't  let  me  stop 
writing  to  entertain  him. 

Nell  frequently  brings  her  writing 
down  to  the  library,  too,  and  often  we 
spend  the  whole  evening  in  golden  si- 
lence, we  girls  writing  letters  and  Ned 
reading  or  sitting  by  the  open  fire. 

Last  evening  father  and  mother  were 
both  away  and  I  was  alone.  I  got  so 
interested  in  my  letter  to  you  that  I 
nearly  forgot  Ned,  who  was  not  reading 
at  all,  but  sitting  in  a  comfortable  chair 
by  the  fire,  watching  the  cat,  I  supposed. 
I  asked  him  if  he  wasn't,  and  he  said, 
"No,  it  was  Kittens  he  was  looking  at." 
Saucy  boy,  wasn't  he,  brother?  Well, 
Lent,  when  I  got  my  letter  finished,  just 
for  the  fun  of  the  thing  I  carried  it  over 
to  Ned  and  asked  him  if  he  didn't  want 
to  read  it.  I  have  read  him  parts  of 


To    Her    Brother  189 

your  letters  to  me,  and  have  once  or 
twice  let  him  read  letters  that  I  have 
written  you.  He  took  the  letter  and 
went  over  to  the  desk  while  I  sat  down 
by  the  fire. 

I  guess  he  must  have  read  it  through 
a  dozen  times — it  took  him  a  fearfully 
long  time.  He  looked  pretty  sober  once 
or  twice  when  I  looked  at  him,  and  then 
I  began  to  get  a  bit  scared  and  to  won- 
der what  sort  of  letter  I  had  written, 
anyway.  What  made  you  ask  me  such 
a  question,  and  why  did  I  write  you  a 
letter  about  the  kind  of  man  I  wanted  to 
marry.  Remember,  Lent,  you  prom- 
ised not  to  show  that  letter  to  any  one. 
Think  of  my  letting  Ned  read  it!  It 
was  just  one  of  my  quick  impulses  when 
I  didn't  stop  to  think. 

Oh,  Lent,  brother,  I  thought  of  all 
sorts  of  things  while  I  was  waiting  for 


190  One    of    Kittens's    Letters 

him,  and  my  heart  was  doing  double- 
quick  all  the  time.  I  wanted  to  run 
away,  and  I  promised  Kittens  a  good 
thumping  when  I  got  her  upstairs  alone. 
Ned  has  been  so  good  to  me  and  I  have 
bothered  him  so  often;  honestly,  Lent, 
I  began  to  be  most  awfully  ashamed  of 
myself  for  letting  him  read  that  letter, 
and  I  even  determined  not  to  send  it  to 
you.  Finally  I  couldn't  stand  things 
any  longer,  and  went  over  to  the  desk 
and  took  the  letter  away  from  him  and 
said  with  a  laugh :  "I  didn't  suppose  it 
was  so  uninteresting  as  that;  it  has 
nearly  put  you  to  sleep.  Do  you  sup- 
pose my  letters  have  that  same  effect  on 
Lent?" 

He  smiled  a  bit,  but  didn't  answer 
me,  so,  of  course,  I  had  to  keep  talking 
to  make  up  for  what  he  didn't  say.  I 
have  forgotten  what  I  said  or  tried  to 


To    Her    Brother  191 

say,  and,  anyway,  it  didn't  amount  to 
much. 

Then  he  turned  off  the  light  by  the 
desk  and  we  went  over  by  the  open  fire 
and  sat  down. 

I  started  to  sit  on  a  cushion  on  the 
floor  in  my  usual  comfortable  and  baby- 
ish fashion,  but  suddenly  remembered 
that  it  wasn't  company  manners,  and  so 
got  a  rocking-chair.  I  tried  to  do  some 
more  talking,  to  fill  in  the  silent  places, 
but  Ned  wouldn't  say  anything,  so  final- 
ly I  got  quieted  down,  too. 

"Shall  we  discuss  your  letter  now," 
he  said,  "just  as  we  have  the  other  let- 
ters you  have  let  me  read?"  Then, 
brother,  I  got  contrary  and  said,  "No, 
let's  not  talk  anything  about  it.  I  don't 
believe  I  shall  send  it  to  Lent,  anyway. 
I  wish  I  hadn't  let  you  see  it." 

He  didn't  say  anything  more  about  it, 


192  One    of   Kittens's   Letters 

and  I  went  and  got  some  marshmallows 
and  began  to  toast  some  for  him.  There 
wasn't  any  special  need  of  my  toasting 
my  cheeks  any  more,  for  they  were  red 
enough,  and  Ned  only  ate  one  marsh- 
mallow.  But  I  felt  so  provoked  with 
myself  that  I  had  to  do  something.  You 
know  Ned  plans  to  go  to  New  York  to- 
morrow for  a  week's  stay,  and  if  the 
business  he  is  undertaking  is  successful 
it  may  mean  that  he  will  live  in  New 
York  for  the  next  six  months.  So,  you 
see,  I  supposed  this  would  be  his  last  call 
on  us,  and  there  I  was  making  things 
so  uncomfortable  for  us  both  and  spoil- 
ing the  whole  evening!  How  did  I 
know  he  was  going  to  take  the  letter  in 
such  a  sober,  serious  fashion — there, 
Lent!  I  got  all  out  of  patience  with  us 
both  and  was  just  ready  to  cry  when  he 
took  some  papers  and  envelopes  from 


To    Her    Brother  193 

his  pocket  and  began  looking  them  over. 
Then  he  handed  one  to  me  and  said: 
"Does  that  look  anything  like  the  man 
you  would  like  to  marry?"  At  first  I 
thought  he  was  trying  to  jolly  me,  only 
his  eyes  didn't  look  that  way,  so  I 
looked  in  the  envelope  and  there  was 
the  dearest  picture  of  himself:  just  a 
small  one.  But  it  is  the  nicest  picture, 
looks  me  right  in  the  eyes  with  the  most 
honest,  happy  expression.  I  looked  at 
it  and  then  at  him.  "It  is  a  dandy  pic- 
ture, Ned,"  I  told  him,  and  then,  Lent, 
I  just  began  to  bawl !  I  hope  you  are 
ashamed  enough  of  Kittens,  but  wait. 
Then  I  threw  a  cushion  on  the  floor  and 
sat  down  on  it  right  beside  Ned  and  just 
put  my  head  on  his  knees  and  wept. 
Wasn't  it  awful  ?  Lent,  don't  you  ever, 
ever  tell.  And  the  worst  is  yet  to  come ! 
I  hardly  gave  him  time  to  be  scared  or 


194  One   of    Kittens's    Letters 

to  run  away  or  anything  else,  though 
he  did  get  his  arms  around  me  and 
forced  me  to  look  at  him ;  then  I  stopped 
crying  and  said,  "Kiss  me,  Ned,  quick." 
Don't  be  ashamed  of  me,  brother,  please 
don't.  I  simply  couldn't  help  it.  He 
took  me  right  into  his  arms  and  kissed 
me,  and  I  knew  that  he  had  forgiven 
all  the  times  I  meant  to  tease  and  the 
times,  too,  when  I  hadn't  meant  to. 

Oh,  brother  dear,  I  was  so  happy !  I 
just  hid  my  head  on  his  shoulder  and 
he  held  me  close,  till  he  whispered, 
"Please,"  and  I  wanted,  oh,  so  badly,  to 
look  into  his  eyes  again.  They  were  so 
steady,  honest  and  true.  Lent,  dear,  I 
am  simply  deliriously,  intoxicatingly 
happy.  I  didn't  suppose  love  could  be 
anything  like  this. 

And  just  think  of  such  a  strong,  hon- 
est, real  man  caring  for  your  flighty 


To    Her    Brother  195 

little  sister.  I  rather  guess  she  will  have 
to  begin  to  try  to  make  herself  worth 
while,  won't  she? 

Ned  is  such  a  thorough  gentleman; 
I  don't  mean  a  dandy  or  anything  of 
that  sort ;  he  isn't  forever  picking  up  a 
girl's  handkerchief  and  fussing  around 
to  see  what  he  can  do  for  us  just  as  if 
he  thought  we  were  too  helpless  to  do 
anything  for  ourselves,  but  I  do  think 
he  has  the  finest  courtesy  and  thought- 
fulness  for  women;  the  real,  old-fash- 
ioned kind,  and  I  love  him  for  it.  He 
doesn't  shine  as  some  of  the  men  do; 
Bert  has  beautiful  eyes — he  knows  it, 
too,  and  knows  how  to  use  them — but 
Ned,  dear  boy,  his  eyes  are  just  steady, 
quiet,  honest  and  true.  And  they  were 
more  than  that  last  night  for  me. 

He  has  loved  me  more  than  a  year; 
you  knew  all  about  it,  and  neither 


196  One    of    Kittens's    Letters 

mother  nor  the  pater  was  a  bit  sur- 
prised. Mother  has  just  been  in  and 
I  jumped  up  and  put  my  arms  around 
her  neck  and  said,  "Mother,  mother, 
mother,  you  knew  about  it  all  the 
time.  Why  didn't  I  know,  too?"  She 
just  hugged  me  and  told  me  that  the 
love  was  there  all  the  time,  even  if  I 
didn't  know  it.  I  guess  she  is  right.  It 
seems  to  me  now  as  if  I  had  always 
loved  Ned,  and  all  the  little  things  he 
has  done  for  me  take  on  a  new  meaning 
and  are  so  precious.  I  always  thought 
he  was  nice  to  me  because  I  was  your 
sister,  and  I  supposed  the  reason  why 
I  tried  to  make  things  pleasant  for  him 
was  because  he  was  such  a  good  friend 
of  yours. 

He  does  admire  you  so  much,  and 
we  have  had  lots  of  good  talks  about 
the  days  when  you  were  in  college 


To   Her   Brother  197 

together,  and  he  is  anticipating  a  hap- 
py six  months  in  New  York,  where 
he  can  see  you  occasionally.  Only, 
Lent,  he  said  last  night  he  wasn't  going 
to  stay  there  six  months  without  me, 
and  that  he  was  thinking  about  my  liv- 
ing in  New  York,  too.  Just  think  of 
that,  brother!  Supposing  I  should  live 
in  New  York  sometime  where  you  could 
run  in  and  see  me  every  day — wouldn't 
it  be  fine ! 

You  have  been  my  dearest  chum  ever 
since  we  were  wee  tots,  and  we'll  al- 
ways be  the  same,  brother  dear,  only 
Ned  comes  in,  too ;  but  that  is  different. 
Why,  he  is  just  everything,  but  you  will 
always  be  the  same  chum  that  you  have 
always  been. 

Brother  dear,  what  do  you  suppose 
has  bothered  Ned  all  these  months — 
well,  there !  he  thought  I  only  cared  for 


198  One   of   Kittens's   Letters 

money  and  couldn't  be  persuaded  to 
share  his  two  thousand  a  year. 

I  was  a  bit  hurt  at  first.  I  am  glad, 
and  I  told  him  so,  that  I  haven't  got  to 
be  a  rich  man's  wife.  Of  course,  I  am 
glad  that  the  pater  has  money  and  all 
that,  and  I  know,  too.,  that  lots  of  girls 
wouldn't  think  of  marrying  a  man  un- 
less he  had  at  least  five  thousand  a  year, 
but  that  isn't  Kittens's  way  of  thinking. 
I  would  rather  begin  with  a  small  cot- 
tage and  all  that  goes  with  it.  I  sup- 
pose I  don't  know  much  about  doing 
without  things,  but  one  can  learn,  and 
with  Ned  to  stand  by  me  who  cares  what 
any  one  else  says  or  thinks?  Ned  says 
you  tried  to  make  him  believe  that  the 
state  of  his  pocketbook  would  make  no 
difference  with  me ;  thank  you  for  that, 
brother.  It  doesn't. 

Now,  Lent,  I  want  to  tell  you  of  one 


To   Her   Brother  199 

of  the  nicest  things  that  Ned  has  done 
for  my  sake. 

Some  months  ago  we  were  talking 
about  smoking,  Nell  and  Ned  and  I, 
and  I  said  that  I  did  not  like  to  have  a 
man  smoke  in  my  presence,  for  it  gave 
me  a  sick  headache,  and  that  even  the 
smell  of  a  cigar  anywhere  about  a  man 
was  repugnant  to  me.  From  some 
things  he  has  said  and  by  putting  two 
and  two  together  I  am  almost  sure  that 
Ned  has  not  smoked  a  single  cigar  since 
that  time.  Only  last  week  he  and  the 
pater  were  sitting  on  the  piazza  and  the 
pater  offered  him  a  cigar,  and  he  de- 
clined it.  I  happened  to  be  going  into 
the  house,  and  I  said  to  him:  "And 
doesn't  'she'  like  smoking  any  better 
than  I  do  ?"  There  was  a  queer  look  in 
his  eyes  when  he  answered  me.  "Not  a 
bit  better." 


zoo  One   of   Kittens's    Letters 

When  a  man  gives  up  a  pleasure  like 
that  and  without  making  a  fuss  about  it 
either,  what  do  you  suppose  a  girl  thinks 
of  him?  I  told  Ned  last  night  what  I 
thought,  and  he — well,  he  said  some 
pretty  nice  things  to  me. 

Oh,  dear !  how  can  I  bear  to  let  him 
go  away  tomorrow !  He  will  be  back  in 
a  week,  but  that  seems  such  a  long  time. 
Perhaps  it  is  a  good  thing  that  he  is 
going  and  I  shall  have  time  to  get  my 
feelings  straightened  out  a  bit.  I've 
just  made  Kittens  stand  before  the  look- 
ing-glass and  promise  herself  that  she 
won't  kiss  him  before  he  goes,  but  there 
is  such  a  naughty  twinkle  in  her  eyes 
that  I  almost  know  she  won't  keep  her 
promise.  Brother  mine,  you  know  I  am 
not  half  good  enough  for  Ned.  I  haven't 
promised  to  marry  him — yet.  When 
I  do  kiss  him  it  will  mean  that  I  am  giv- 


To   Her   Brother  201 

ing  him  everything  that  a  girl  can  give 
to  the  man  she  loves. 

I  am  not  all  of  the  lovely  things  he 
says  I  am,  and  I  am  a  bit  afraid  he  will 
find  it  out  and  won't  love  me  any  more. 
But  I  am  not  much  afraid,  for  I  am  very 
sure  that  your  little  sister  has  sole  pos- 
session of  his  big,  honest  heart.  Aren't 
you  glad  for  her  ? 

No  one  has  yet  seen  the  picture  he 
brought  me.  He  told  me  that  the  nega- 
tive was  broken,  and  only  this  one  pic- 
ture taken.  So  it  is  all  mine.  I  shall 
show  it  to  mother  and  father  in  a  day 
or  two,  and  when  you  come  home  next 
week  you  shall  see  it,  but  no  one  else 
ever  shall.  Isn't  Kittens  foolish !  Never 
mind,  she  is  happy.  The  pater  and 
mother  are  so  pleased  in  my  joy.  The 
pater  gave  me  a  big  hug.  As  for 
mother,  she  has  had  a  warm  place  in  her 


2O2  One   of   Kittens's   Letters 

heart  for  Ned  ever  since  you  two  were 
in  college  together.  Nell  shares  my  joy, 
although  she  looks  a  bit  sober,  and  I 
know  she  is  thinking  about  Bert. 

I've  often  thought  of  the  time  when  you 
would  get  married,  Lent,  and  I  should 
lose  my  chum  and  brother,  and  I  didn't 
like  the  idea  a  bit.  But  now  I  just  want 
you  to  be  as  happy  as  I  am,  and  I  shall 
be  glad  for  the  girl  that  you  make  as 
happy  as  Ned  has  made  me. 

But  there !  brother  dear,  I  must  stop. 
This  is  a  long  letter  and  I  haven't  half 
expressed  my  great  gladness ;  I  will  tell 
you  more  when  you  come  home  next 
week. 

Ned  is  coming  up  the  street,  and  Kit- 
tens just  has  to  run  and  meet  him — and, 
well,  never  you  mind !    She's  just 
Your  happy,  happy  sister, 

KITTENS. 


A  MAN'S  ANSWER  TO  A  MAN 


A  MAN'S  ANSWER  TO  A  MAN. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  "HER  BROTHER'S 
LETTERS/' 

OF  THE  hundreds  of  letters  that 
have  come  to  me  from  men,  as 
the  result  of  the  serial  publica- 
tion of  the  foregoing  letters,  this  is  the 
one  I  have  chosen  to  answer.     It  is 
worth  reading  because  it  presents  the 
subject  clearly  and  yet  with  reserve: 

"I  cannot  help  wondering  if  there 
aren't  some  few  things  to  be  said  for  the 
young  fellows  who,  like  myself,  may 
have  been  reared  by  good  mothers,  who 
deep  in  their  hearts  honor  and  respect  a 
pure,  sweet  woman,  who  are  not  natu- 
rally bad,  and  yet  who  will  sometimes 
allow  the  'other  side'  of  themselves  to 
205 


206          A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man 

gain  the  ascendency  for  a  time.  I  know 
that  the  Tm-no-worse-than-other-fel- 
lows'  argument  sounds  pitiably  weak 
when  brought  forth  as  an  excuse  for 
such  things,  but  the  thought  in  the 
mind  of  a  young  fellow  that  all  or  'most 
men  do'  has  lots  to  do  sometimes  with 
his  giving  way,  especially  as  he  is  apt  to 
look  rather  lightly  upon  the  reward  of 
virtue  when  he  sees  many  other  men 
eschew  any  possible  chance  of  such  re- 
ward and  yet  seem  to  lose  little  or  noth- 
ing of  their  standing  in  the  world. 

"In  a  recent  novel  by  one  of  our  fore- 
most writers,  one  of  the  characters,  a 
young  man  of  the  South,  exceptionally 
clean-minded  and  of  high  ideals,  is 
made  to  say,  'I'm  not  "innocent"  in  the 
least.  You'll  find  we're  all  men  here, 
just  as  much  as  any  men  in  the  North 
you  could  pick  out.' 


A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man          207 

"In  another  novel,  also  by  a  promi- 
nent writer  and  a  war  correspondent  as 
well,  the  hero,  a  virile,  strong-headed 
chap  who  is  pictured  as  every  inch  a 
man,  is  not,  by  his  own  confession,  a 
whit  more  innocent,  and  this  confession 
is  made  to  the  young  girl  he  hopes  to 
marry,  and  whom  in  the  end  he  does 
make  his  wife. 

"Do  not  all  these  things  influence  the 
average  young  fellow,  whose  instincts 
may  be  gentlemanly,  in  the  belief  that 
society  is  rather  inclined  as  a  whole  to 
be  tolerant  toward  the  young  man  who 
is  'having  his  fling/  expecting  it  of  him 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  thinking  none 
the  worse  of  him  for  it  ? 

"Isn't  it  true  that  a  young  man  who 
mingles  much  with  men  and  women,  or 
reads  our  novels,  will  come  in  the  course 
of  time  to  see  that  virtue  in  a  single  man 


208          A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man 

is  hardly  expected  ?  If  the  feminine  half 
of  our  society  demanded  the  same  of  a 
man  that  the  men  demand  of  them, 
would  not  the  men  as  a  rule  meet  the 
demand,  and  such  a  letter  as  yours  not 
have  the  power  to  make  so  many  of  us 
smart?" 

Of  course,  all  this  is  merely  saying 
that  what  a  man  can  do,  with  a  certain 
stretch  of  conscience,  a  woman  can  not 
and  must  not  do. 

It  is  the  old,  old  idea  that  so- 
ciety condones  in  a  man  what  it  con- 
demns in  a  woman.  That  is,  in  a 
sense,  true:  no  one  can  gainsay  it. 
That  the  law  itself  will,  in  a  police 
"raid,"  dismiss  the  men  with  a  repri- 
mand the  following  morning  and  im- 
prison the  women  is  a  spectacle  that  is 
constantly  shown  us  in  our  newspapers. 
But  is  it  fair  ?  Is  it  what  we  know  today 


A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man          209 

as  the  "square  deal"?    To  me  it  is  in- 
fernally unfair. 

I  am  not  one  of  those  men  who  believe 
that  what  is  called  the  "social  evil"  in 
our  cities  should  be  stamped  out.  I  have 
traveled  too  much  and  seen  too  much 
of  life  from  every  point  of  view  to  hug 
such  a  delusion.  But  because  such  a 
social  evil  exists  must  I  make  myself 
part  of  it  ?  Because  there  is  a  grogshop 
on  the  corner  of  the  street  where  I  live, 
and  another  on  the  corner  of  the  street 
where  I  work,  must  I  go  into  the  one  or 
the  other?  Because  other  men  get 
drunk  must  I  get  drunk?  Because  I 
know  where  there  is  an  opium-joint 
must  I  go  and  smoke  the  pipe  ?  Because 
a  social  evil  exists  must  I  make  it  a  per- 
sonal condition  in  myself?  Not  at  all. 
If  society  condones,  or  will  condone,  or 
blink  at,  or  wink  at,  if  you  choose,  some- 


21  o          A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man 

thing  which  my  sense  of  fairness,  of  de- 
cency, of  self-respect  tells  me  is  not 
square,  is  that  any  excuse  for  my  doing 
it?  If  other  men  commit  a  wrong  does 
that  make  it  right  for  me  to  do  it? 
What  matters  it  to  me  what  other  men 
do?  My  conscience  is  mine:  my  self- 
respect  is  mine:  my  principles  are  my 
own — mine  to  guide  me,  ME,  ME.  Does 
it  seem  right,  square,  honest,  to  me? 
That  is  the  only  question  there  is  for  me 
to  settle. 

I  do  not  say  that  there  should  be  an 
equal  social  law  for  men  and  women 
alike.  Although  I  believe  it  would  be 
the  only  square  thing,  nevertheless  I  am 
not  in  the  business  of  making  laws  for 
others.  I  have  enough  to  do  to  square 
myself,  and  I  can  square  myself  only  by 
believing,  as  I  have  always  believed, 
that  the  same  decent  code  of  conduct 


A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man          211 

that  applies  to  my  sister  applies  to  me, 
and  I  cannot  see  it  in  any  other  way.  If 
other  men  see  it  in  another  light  that  is 
their  affair.  This  is  not  living,  perhaps, 
according  to  the  spirit  that  I  am  my 
brother's  keeper.  But  I  see  very  little 
room  in  this  life  for  theory :  to  me  it  is 
a  living,  burning  "condition  that  con- 
fronts" me,  and  it  is  first  and  foremost 
up  to  me  to  keep  my  own  life  clean ;  not 
letting  the  other  fellow  shift  for  him- 
self, no;  helping  him  when  I  can,  and 
giving  him  a  lift  when  he  needs  it  and 
when  I  can  give  it  to  him.  But  my  rule 
has  been  first  to  see  that  my  own  door- 
step is  clean  before  I  begin  to  bother 
about  other  people's  doorsteps.  And  I 
have  never  seen  a  time  yet  when  looking 
after  my  own  doorstep  hasn't  kept  me 
tolerably  busy. 

Of  course,  I  know  all  that  men  say  on 


212          A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man 

this  question:  the  evasions  they  bring 
to  ease  their  consciences,  or  to  try  to; 
the  supposed  human  needs,  and  all  that. 
This  one  fact,  nevertheless,  remains :  of 
all  the  men  I  know,  the  best  of  them — 
I  mean  now  the  biggest  of  them — the 
men  who  are  men,  when  we  have  talked 
as  men  will  occasionally  talk,  have  con- 
fided to  me  that  they  have  never  found 
any  -valid  excuse  for  "having  their 
fling."  There  are  notions,  of  course,  to 
the  contrary,  heaps  of  them.  But 
never  yet  have  I  run  these  notions  to 
the  ground — and  I  have  run  a  few 
of  them  down — without  finding,  in 
the  last  analysis,  that  they  are  no- 
tions and  purely  that,  without  a  single 
solid  foundation-stone  to  give  them  the 
slightest  basis.  It  is  not  disrespect,  but 
simply  the  common  truth,  to  say  that 
mistaken  masculine  notions  can  and  do 


A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man          213 

find  receptive  soil  in  the  medical  mind 
as  well  as  in  the  legal  mind,  or  any  other 
kind  of  mentality.  That  a  man  is  a 
physician  does  not  make  him  any  the 
more  fit  to  be  my  moral  guide,  except 
when  I  digress  from  morality  to  endan- 
ger my  physical  self.  And  it  must,  in- 
deed, be  a  man  of  great  medical  under- 
standing who  could  tell  me,  and  prove  it, 
that  a  decent  life  in  a  man  is  incompat- 
ible with  his  best  and  wisest  human  self. 
Nor  can  I  see  the  slightest  common 
sense  in  the  argument  that  a  young  fel- 
low may  lapse  because  it  is  "expected" 
of  him,  or  that  he  will  get  no  credit  for 
abstaining  if  he  doesn't.  In  the  first 
place,  it  isn't  "expected"  of  him.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  distinctly  expected  of  him 
that  he  will  lead  a  clean  and  decent  life, 
and  he  should  expect  it  of  himself  if  no 
one  else  expects  it.  And  as  to  getting 


214          A  Man's  Answer  to  a  Man 

"credit"  for  it,  men  do  not  lead  honor- 
able lives  for  the  sake  of  getting  credit 
for  it :  for  the  sake  of  winning  applause. 
They  do  it  for  themselves:  for  their 
own  self-respect:  for  their  own  inner 
satisfaction,  that  they  may  be  true  to 
themselves  and  to  tne  best  that  is  within 
them.  It  is  their  very  silence  of  decency 
that  is  often  misconstrued  into  a  veiled 
inference  of  indecency.  The  men  who 
live  lives  as  decent  men's  lives  should  be 
lived  do  not  talk  of  the  fact  as  an 
achievement:  they  live  their  lives  and 
let  it  go  at  that.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  men  do  give  a  young  fellow 
credit  if  he  lives  a  decent  life,  and  they 
know  it  far  oftener  than  he  thinks  they 
do.  Only  they  don't  talk  about  it.  To 
decent  men  decency  is  a  thing  that  is 
taken  for  granted,  and  there  is  always 
an  indefinable  atmosphere,  an  unseen 


A   Man's   Answer   to   a   Man     215 

bond,  one  might  say,  that  draws  a  young 
man  leading  a  decent  life  toward  men 
who  have  lived  as  he  is  living.  "Birds 
of  a  feather  flock  together"  is  as  true 
of  people  of  high  principles  as  it  is  of 
the  kind  to  whom  the  truism  is  more 
popularly  applied. 

Men  who  have  a  single  standard  of 
honor  in  their  lives  are  far  more  numer- 
ous than  the  average  young  fellow  gen- 
erally supposes,  and  he  need  never  share 
the  delusion  that  if  he  lives  a  decent  and 
clean  life  he  will  find  himself  apart  from 
other  men — except  the  men  from  whom 
it  is  always  a  distinction  to  be  apart.  A 
young  fellow  is  always  known  by  his 
true  colors.  That  need  never  give  him 
a  moment's  worry.  Adherence  to  the 
very  highest  principles  always  reflects 
itself  in  a  young  fellow's  life,  and  al- 
ways counts  with  himself  as  well  as  with 


216     A   Man's   Answer   to   a   Man 

others.  "For  what  is  called  "sowing  wild 
oats"  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  self- 
degradation  to  any  young  chap.  That 
at  twenty-five  or  thirty  he  has  passed 
through  a  siege  does  not  make  him,  or 
any  man,  one  particle  more  of  a  man. 
What  it  does  do  is  to  make  him  just  so 
much  less  of  a  man.  It  doesn't  mean  a 
broader  view  of  life  to  have  experienced 
certain  phases  of  it:  it  means  a  dwarf- 
ing of  his  views.  And  he  realizes  this 
afterward.  For  the  "life"  that  has  had 
glitter  for  him  in  youth  becomes  a  repel- 
lent remembrance  to  him  as  a  man.  The 
reputation  and  power  that  come  of  right 
living  are  what  the  man  of  from  forty 
to  seventy  covets,  and  nothing  but  the 
well-spent  years  of  early  life  can  assure 
these. 

I  haven't  put  up  impossible  ideals  in 
what  I  have  said.    For  a  man  to  live  a 


A   Man's    Answer   to   a   Man     217 

decent  life  isn't  to  live  up  in  the  clouds, 
or  with  his  feet  far  from  the  earth,  or 
to  be  a  "ninny"  or  a  "sissy."  It  is  sim- 
ply to  be  a  man,  nothing  more  or  noth- 
ing less.  And  there  are  many  thou- 
sands of  chaps  who  can  say,  with  hon- 
esty, what  a  friend  of  mine  said  at  his 
wedding  breakfast.  He  lifted  a  glass 
and  drank  a  toast  which  gave  a  mo- 
mentary shock  to  his  bride  and  their 
guests,  but  behind  which  lay  a  signifi- 
cance unexpressed  and  yet  understood 
by  every  man — big  and  fine  and  clear : 

"Here's  to  the  happiest  years  of  my  life, 
Spent  in  the  arms  of  another  man's  wife: 

My  mother!" 


A    000118711     1 


